Enter Sandman
by mrstserc
Summary: Dean, Sam, Castiel, and Bobby face two of the strongest menaces loose upon the earth as Fallen Angels Asmodeus and Ba'el search for ways to to free their captain, Lucifer, from his cage.Before the Fall 'Verse. Is an alternate season 7. Ships Destiel, established. No Sam bashing here.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

_Say your prayers little one_

_Don't forget my son to include everyone_

_I tuck you in, Warm within, keep you free from sin_

_'Til the sandman he comes_

_Sleep with one eye open, gripping your pillow tight_

_Exit light, enter night_

_Take my hand_

_We're off to never never-land_

"Enter Sandman" by Metallica

There was just something so _fun_ about working with someone who looks at you like you are something scraped off the bottom of their shoe, the creature known as Meg reflects bitterly as she stares into the frothing surface of blood beneath her. Each bubble breaks the surface in thick, squelching pops, droplets misting the air, the voice from the Down Below filters through to her in a language no mortal would understand, screeching along a connection of magic and hellfire. This wasn't exactly kid stuff she was doing here, considering only months ago she'd had _no_ backup from the Hell side of things, and considering _her_ role in things, she had assumed maybe the dicks would have some appreciation for her work.

Or at least enough to not pace around her peripheral impatiently, incessantly, circling like some overgrown buzzard complete with feathery trimming that she could catch glimpses of in the shadows of her ritual fire.

The urge to tell the angel in her corner to buzz off is rising, but she isn't suicidal, and, unfortunately, chuckles here doesn't seem to have any more sense of humor than he does patience. Funny for a guy who'd been trapped under a rock for millions of years.

"What are they saying?" The deep voice asks, for what was probably the fifteenth time, and she resists the urge to roll her eyes in the face of the question. Not all angels, fallen angels, rebellious angels and Grigori were made alike, she is finding, and this one isn't even in her top five favorites. Which is saying something.

If Hell had needs a barking drill sergeant from that fallen squadron of angels who'd founded it for Lucifer, Ba'el is it. And if anything, being confined for. . . well, who the hell knows how long. . . has just made him impatient and bitchy on top of intolerably bossy.

"The same thing the rest have said. No one in the Pit has any idea how to crack it, and it all points back the same direction." She manages to keep her annoyance out of the saccharine sweet toneless voice, but she's _told_ them the direction they need to head, and it isn't to her old pals down in Tortureland, Perdition. They need to be paying attention topside, and she doesn't need another bunch of allies who make the same mistakes as their predecessors.

"It's the Winchesters we need, and their little pet."

"Angels are not _pets_," Ba'el hisses, suddenly close to her ear, and this is a creature who could destroy her on a _whim_ and she is completely conscious of that fact. But she isn't planning to roll over and show her throat, either. She doesn't bother turning to face him, instead flicks her fingers to discard with the cooling corpse that has made her little collect call to hell possible.

"Clarence isn't exactly an angel anymore."

"Castiel. . ." there is a faint emphasis on the name, a dangerous note of correction ". . . is my brother."

"_Cas_. . ." and her own correction is blatant. ". . . picked his family. And it isn't you. We need him to pull out the brother you _actually _care about. We've _got_ a solid lead into the pit. And _I_ have a way to get to him."

"He has hidden the vessels and himself." Ba'el rumbles, and suddenly he is back to pacing again, away from his spot breathing down the back of her neck, and she feels herself relax slightly with the deceptive illusion of safety those yards brought. "We will try other means. You may pursue your own."

"Oh, goodie. Because we're good at pursuit, aren't we?" Meg's lips curl up into a satisfied smile, as she slants her eyes towards the door, to her new toy. "And I have a plan. Little something I picked up in Utah."

**. . .**

Dean Winchester's breath steams the air in puffs as he steps carefully through the parking lot, balancing the most precious cargo he could carry on a cold January morning in one hand, plastic bag hanging from his other hand swinging in as he steps with exaggerated care over the iced-over curb and across to where his Baby idles in the lot. The two most important people in his life were probably still arguing. . . well, Sam was arguing and Cas was making incoherent disagreeable noises from the back seat. . . over newspapers and maps within the car.

Dean raps a knuckle against the glass of the window, shuffling from one foot to the other in the cold as if he was afraid his legs were going to freeze off if he stood still too long, until the window rolls down and a hand snakes out. . . taking just _one_ of the coffees, the one with CASS scribbled on the side in Sharpie. Leaving Dean with an off-balanced coffee carrier threatening to tip, and his other hand still tied up in the plastic bag as the window rolls up between them like a barrier once more.

"Gee, Cas. Thanks. Glad to know you're still such a team player." He snipes when he finally rights the coffee carrier enough to put it on top of the car and open the driver's side door, popping his head in to shoot an affected glare at the angel huddled over his coffee in the back seat, soaking in its warmth and scenting it, nose nearly touching the plastic lid.

Rolling his eyes, Dean shoves their breakfast into Sam's hands and picks their coffee back up, separating Sam's out and tossing the carrier at the trashcan on the sidewalk before folding himself into the driver's seat and adjusting the vents so he could thaw out. "We decide on anything?"

"I've decided Sméagol back there doesn't ever get a vote until after he's caffeinated." Sam mutters, apparently just as amused by Castiel's reverent treatment of the coffee cup in his hands, and the younger Winchester sips the spilled coffee off of the lid of his own cup with a slurp, pulling the maps back into his lap and refolding them carefully.

"He _is_ about two seconds away from saying 'My Precious' and shanking us both for being near it." Dean agrees, and maybe the mirror _is_ already tilted to give him the best angle on the fallen angel in the backseat, and maybe he _is _already watching it with a faint smirk as Castiel takes the first careful sip of his drink, pauses in surprise, and then licks his lips and lets out a groan of appreciation as he tips his head against the window and gulps down more, Adam's apple bobbing smoothly as he practically guzzles the drink down. "They had some sugary Mocha thing._ Thought _you might like that."

Sam watches him knowingly from the passenger's seat, and Dean studiously ignores his little brother's rising glee as best he can as he puts the car into gear and eases them out of the parking lot, but he knows he's flushing slightly at being caught staring at Cas again. Dean and Sam have always delighted in teasing each other, and his relationship has recently become a goldmine of material for Sam. "Dude. I don't know what's funnier: Cas discovering the guilty pleasure of chocolate masquerading as coffee, or _you_. You are so _whipped_."

"This makes me _very_ happy. Do many places make these?" Cas interrupts hopefully, rolling the cup between his palms as he licks chocolate syrup off of the rim of plastic, and Dean jerks a thumb indicatively towards the back seat, taking it as a win when neither Winchester can keep a straight face at the badass angel of the lord, reduced to childlike glee over a Starbucks cup.

"Him. Hands down, him. And anyway, the guy who's ever had soy _anything_ near his coffee doesn't get to say shit about other people's coffee orders, right Cas?"

"I think he's trying to cuddle a coffee cup. How many months you figure we got left until the back seat's just a nest of candy wrappers?" Sam asks, turned sideways in his seat and smirking at the fallen angel, and he might be getting fucked with, but Dean loves mornings like this, his family on the road again, where they _should_ be, without people crowding in on them or trying to kill them.

"I am not my brother." Castiel corrects Sam, but come to think of it. . . Gabriel with his candy-bars and pagan goddesses, Balthazar with his sweet champagnes and soprano navels . . . Maybe it was just that the angels who flew closest to the earth all ended up with a wicked sweet tooth of some sort or another and an insatiable appetite. Dean hoped so. For more reasons than one. He couldn't handle the image of Uriel guzzling Big Red and Seven-Up while talking about leveling cities, or Zachariah downing Ho-Hos.

Actually, the thought sets him off snickering again, while Castiel eyes him from the back seat, holding his coffee cup defensively. "I would have had coffee already if Sam hadn't chased us out before dawn, as if he was attempting to slink away for fear the women there. . ."

"They were frikkin' _scary_, man. You have no idea. Either of you." Sam objects explosively, pointing at both of his companions.

". . . would put him up for auction like a prized lamb. . . "

"Maybe they'd have paid per pound. I mean, geeze, coulda turned a profit finally off of the overgrown man-boy. . ."

"Hah hah. Laugh it up, jerk. Only thing that saved you was that Cas pretty much branded 'Property of Castiel, hands off' on your ass. . ."

"Actually, I assumed branding his 'ass' would be too forward of me." Dean nearly chokes on his own coffee at Sam's horrified expression and Castiel's compete deadpan. "Nevertheless, if my presence warned away the apparently terrifying attentions of the women at the camp, you're welcome." Castiel continues dryly to Dean from the back seat, and takes a more dignified drink from his coffee while the Winchesters break down into laughter, Sam thunking his head against the window repeatedly as if he can jar the image out of his mind. Cas's eyes are bright and electric in the early morning light when he meets Dean's glance at the rearview, corners of his mouth up tilted, sharing a joke rather than inadvertently the butt of one.

"Cas with a sense of humor. It really is the end times." Dean's grinning as if he's not quite sure how to stop, and maybe that's a little on the nose, but the entire thing's just too damned funny. Every time Cas cracks a joke, it's a bit like watching some gangly newborn exotic animal try to get its legs beneath it for the first time. It's awkward and fumbling and kind of adorable, though the second Dean starts saying crap like that aloud they're revoking his Man Card once and for all.

Sam coughs into his hand, and it sounds distinctly like _whipped, _and Dean flips his brother off casually without lifting his hand from the wheel. "You're just pissy 'cause you set that one up for him."

"God, I hope he's still funnier in Enochian." Sam mutters, and if he never has to hear about Castiel's dibs on Dean's ass, or vice-versa, ever again. . .

Castiel tilts his head to the side, darts his tongue across his lips, and considers that for a long moment. The words that roll out of his mouth next are guttural, rough, completely incomprehensible, and _holy fuck that was his native language_ and Dean never really stopped to consider that anymore and the car is suddenly very warm as he shifts in the driver's seat slightly as Castiel continues, eyes fixed on the angel in the rearview and the way he shapes his lips and how each syllable is dark and graveled, and the rich texture carries into Cas's quiet laugh to himself at a joke neither of them would ever understand and Dean has to jerk the wheel to take them back off of the rumble strip and snap his eyes back on the road again.

"Seriously, Dean?" Sam exclaims, shielding his face in his palms, trying not to look at his brother or the fallen angel "You _hate_ dead languages. You've called me a geek my entire life for . . ."

"It was his Batman voice!" Dean defends, and Cas looks between the two of them with faint puzzlement.

"Fine, whatever, perv. Cas, no more 'Batman Voice,' or my brother'll end up driving us into a ditch or something."

"What is a 'Batman voice?' Is that a good thing. . .?"

"Yes." Dean says enthusiastically, at the exact moment Sam emphatically declares "No." and all of a sudden the Winchesters are laughing again with a bemused Castiel in the back seat, and it's just about perfect. He's yearned for this almost his entire life, the easy camaraderie of family, the sense of belonging to someone, having something to go home to (even if home is a string of crappy motel rooms) mixed with the solid, steadying purpose of hunting, and his brother at his shoulder and happy to be there, and his angel solid and present and slowly adjusting to his life as a _Winchester_.

Dean feels like they're finally shaking off the funk Camp Chitaqua had thrust them into, building something out of the rubble of Zion National Park, and he hasn't felt this light since Christmas. He's still chuckling as he drags his phone out of his pocket at the first chords of Back in Black, greeting Bobby cheerily. "You make your escape yet, or are we gonna have to put together a rescue crew to save you from old widow women?"

"I'm still here. Throwing them off a scent. Need you boys to turn around. We've got a situation." Bobby's gruff rumble carries through the phone as if he's keeping his voice down and has a hand over his mouth and the receiver, and it's such a drastic shift, his brother and Cas joking and Bobby's urgency, that a sense of dread settles over him as he flicks the turn signal on as he U-Turns the Impala on the empty road, holding the phone between his shoulder and his ear.

"Okay, we're turning 'round. What's the situation? Where're we going?" Dean bats Sam's shoulder, gesturing at the glove box, where his brother draws out a notebook and pen, ready to take down an address.

"St. Louis. I got a call. . . took a little while to get to us, the phone number she had was to the old place, lost that line in the fire. You may not wanna bring Castiel with you, though. . ."

"Why the hell not?" The instant flare of defensiveness surprises Dean in its force, and beside him he can see Sam raise his head and fix a worried stare on him, broad forehead drawing down.

"Because the last thing Jimmy Novak's widow needs when you go investigating her missing daughter is you parading her dead husband's body in front of her." Bobby shoots back, sharp and unyielding, and Dean feels all of the air punched out of him at the words, combined with the wide, curious, concerned blue eyes framed out and watching him in the rearview.

**. . .**

Wearing a suit is starting to feel unfamiliar, and Castiel tugs on his new tie to loosen it, glancing over at Bobby Singer. This suit feels strange after wearing Jimmy Novak's for years because it's not the same baggy, loose fitting, worn jacket and slacks. Dean helped him pick this two-piece out at the thrift store, and he insisted they go to the tailor to have it fitted. The outfit is a dark charcoal grey, a white dress shirt, and new tie – a stripe pattern, but still mostly sky-blue. Dean told him it looked good on him while straightening his tie and the collar of his shirt, and smoothing a hand unnecessarily along his shoulders.

Sam made some kind of remark about how Dean was playing dress up with a new doll, but Cas is nearly certain it had been a joke, because he knows Dean does not plan to get him a "Barbie Dream House," and he cannot imagine why Sam would think Dean should drive a pink convertible. Sam really thinks his own jokes and teases are funny lately. Castiel, for his part, has no problem with Dean's expressed interest in his appearance and attire, or the glint it puts in his eyes.

With his hair combed back and no cap on, wearing a suit and an overcoat, Cas reflects that Bobby looks completely different from his usual lax and unkempt self. In his FBI character Agent McCreedy, the older hunter even stands and moves differently; he bustles when moving and projects an aura of authority while standing still. Cas thinks he is actually learning a lot about disguise just watching him work.

Maybe this was not just a ploy to send Cas away while the brothers work. Dean told him he should learn from Bobby when he assigned him to go with him to the morgue and find out what they could about the dead utility workers in St. Louis. Cas knows there is more going on, saw Dean's agitation and his avoidance, but Dean said to be patient and he will fill him in later. As if Dean Winchester could teach Castiel anything about patience.

Cas follows along after Bobby, flashing his badge – the right one and right side up – at the appropriate time. He is getting better at being a hunter. He and Bobby are at the Medical Examiner's Building in downtown St. Louis. The Winchesters are near the scene of the incident where these utility workers were injured about four miles away in East St. Louis. Bobby had found possible demon activity, he said, but as Cas examines the bodies of these three city employees – he knows differently.

This is angelic activity.

Having their eyes burned out did not kill these men, Cas notes, nor were their eyes burned by electricity as the M.E. suggests. It was a fall of some type, broken bones and internal injuries that killed them. Bobby is conversing with the medical doctor who works at the M.E.'s office as Cas muses to himself that most angels would be more careful filling a human vessel –doing so in plain sight of others where the observers could be injured is reckless, or simply callous. One of his brethren has corporealized so close to his current location: the hour drive between St. Louis and Camp Chitaqua is nothing to an angel's will. It is quite possible that this is finally Balthazar or Gabriel sending someone to end him.

It is, after all, merely a matter of time.

Cas waits until he and Bobby are alone in the examination room before tuning back in to what Bobby is saying - he is still not as comfortable lying to people, and, at times, it is simpler to allow the more experienced hunters to do the talking. "Lot's of demonic omens right now in St. Louis…"

Cas cuts in, and for the first time he realizes that he has learned impatience from Dean.

"This is not demonic; it is angelic. Bobby, you must recognize the eyes from the unfortunate incident when your friend Pamela was too insistent…"

Bobby narrows his eyes as he intrudes into Cas's sentence. "Too insistent?... Why you arrogant little…"

"…and demanded to see my true face." Cas finishes, feeling himself grow angry. There is something they are keeping from him, he can tell. Oh, he can no longer read what is on their minds, but they should stop underestimating him. He is millennium older than _any of them_. He does not intend to allow Bobby Singer, no matter how much Dean Winchester loves him, to patronize him, nor to behave paternally towards him. Or to lie to his face.

"Now listen here, Cas. I don't know what kind of bee flew up your bonnet all the sudden, but…"

Castiel makes a slicing motion through the air with one arm, the other fisted by his side. He does not intend to listen while Bobby continues to prevaricate. Cas leans in toward Bobby, staring in his eyes intently, ready to wring every ounce of truth and dispel every lie from him.

"Who did you send Dean and Sam to meet?" Cas is demanding an answer – almost nose to nose with Bobby, and he cants his head, bird-like, inhuman despite months of practice at humanity. "What is it you are trying to hide from me?"

Bobby steps back, his mouth drawn in a grimace. It was his suggestion to keep Castiel away from the person who brought them to St. Louis, but Dean and Sam agreed. Dean told him not to tell the angel until they knew more – said he would break the news to the angel himself. _Sometimes that boy lets his affection for people blind him from seeing any problem with them_. Bobby figures that assessment of Dean includes himself. _Sometimes I think me and Sam, and this fallen angel, become stronger, better people just trying to live up to that image that Dean has of us._

"You think we're trying to hide stuff from you?" Bobby's standing with his arms folded across his chest, and Castiel narrows his eyes critically.

"Do you think I am stupid, or that I need to be coddled?" Cas's voice is dropping in register, graveled and angry. Bobby figures if feathers there actually had feathers they were ruffled right now. This is problematic.

This is his _role_ among them, Castiel thinks, they should not be keeping things from him that clearly pertain to the angels. Particularly not _now_.

"Well, hell, Castiel. I don't know what to make of you half the time." Bobby's grunt expresses his disgust in the situation: he needs to rein this back in quickly, before they draw attention to themselves. "What I do know is that we've got work to do here because we need these medical records. Anything else you want, you're just gonna have to wait to get from Dean, 'cause I ain't saying."

The tense moment stretches between them, Castiel's face unreadable, Bobby's stance unyielding. After the span of a few slow breaths, Castiel steps swiftly past him, and Bobby swears quietly as Castiel stalks away from him.

Bobby pulls out his cellphone to call Dean. The boy needs to be ready to talk as soon as they meet back up, because the last thing they need is Castiel deciding to strike out on his own in this for answers.


	2. Chapter 2

_You see the world through your cynical eyes_

_You're a troubled young man I can tell_

_You've got it all in the palm of your hand_

_But your hand's wet with sweat and your head needs a rest_

_And you're fooling yourself if you don't believe it_

_You're killing yourself if you don't believe it_

"Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)" –Styx

**. . . **

Just over half a year ago in Iowa, an old priest had offered some wisdom to the Winchester boys and their fallen angel as they geared up for a fight that would end up changing all of their lives and put them on the long road to St. Louis. He'd speculated that, when faced with the supernatural and confronted with evil, people ended up changed irrevocably in one of few predictable ways.

Looking at Amelia Novak now, Dean is pretty sure she ended up one of the victims.

The years have not been kind to the once pretty woman; she is haggard, sleepless, and gaunt, and looks like she has been for a while now, beyond just the disappearance of her daughter. When she offers Dean and Sam a stiff drink at just after noon, he figures that could be part of the problem. For nearly a year, she'd believed that her husband had walked out on her, or had died. For a year, she had kept their house in Pontiac, raised her young daughter, and done the best she could.

And then the demons came. And then the angel. Between them, they tore apart everything she'd thought she believed. They tried to take her daughter from her, made her a prisoner in her own body, stole her husband away again, shredded her faith, and in the end even her daughter had begun pulling away from her, all on her own. And all she had been able to do was numbly watch it all fall apart.

Now, Claire's missing and all Amelia could think to do is call these Winchesters, two men who spoke to the creature inhabiting her husband, riding around in the body of her college sweetheart, as if it was a _friend_. This is her last hope, a narrow thread, that perhaps the thing that took Jimmy and the men who stood by and let it happen might care _some_ for the family that was ripped apart. And maybe that these men can do for her daughter what they failed to do for her husband: _save_ her.

"The police think she ran off on her own." Amelia offers flatly, as she pours herself a drink, drawing her sleeves over her knuckles as she clings to the glass quietly, uncaring of if these Winchesters are looking down their noses at her. She _needs_ a drink right now. Deepset doe eyes downcast, she looks at the surface of it, rather than meet the eyes of the man shuffling before her. "I only heard about the thing at the park two days ago . . . A man at the casino was talking. I called the numbers I had, but your cell phone. . ."

Well, that cell took a trip to Hell and never really quite recovered, and Bobby's lines got burned down. She reached them eventually, though.

"When was the last time you saw her, and where was she?" Sam is at his earnest best, wide hazel eyes sympathetic, a notebook in hand like a real investigator, but he's looming despite himself. His usual urge is to put himself on even footing, to fold his hulking frame into whatever seat will take him, but the RV is tiny and dirty, and clothes, clean and dirty are stacked on most surfaces. With Amelia and the two Winchesters, the place is crowded, and a far cry from the neatly maintained Martha Stewart Living spacious home she had built with Jimmy, the apple pie life that was so coveted. Sam's standing stooped because he's afraid he's going to bang his head on something, and the tiny trailer smells like alcohol and only partially cleaned up vomit, and looking at how shaken Amelia is, it's not hard to realize that the entire situation is making her physically ill.

Dean frowns at the back of her head as he casts a critical eye over their setting, letting Sam do the talking for them. There's too much crap in his head, looking at this place, for him to be the one taking the wheel. Sam hadn't even had to ask: he'd taken a long look at his brother on the porch, nodded to himself, and been the one to raise a hand to rap on the door.

His little brother might frequently be a pain in the ass, but he had his moments.

"New Years Eve. At the casino." She says promptly, and while her hand is shaking, the pull she takes from her drink is smooth and ungrimacing. "I didn't realize right away. It was only a few days . . . We're working different shifts, and I'm usually in bed before she's off."

_More like passed out, not going to bed early_. It's not a charitable thought, and Dean's surprised by the strength of it. This wasn't any way to _live_. Sure as hell not any way to let the kid live, even if she wasn't technically a _kid_ any more. But Amelia had put the blinders on hard when Cas chose Jimmy. She'd told him he was crazy, practically drove him out. . . and when things stopped being part of the cookie-cutter world, when it turned out she'd been _wrong,_ she'd let herself fall apart. People _chose_ to be the victim.

And he knows, looking at her. . . how much this is going to upset Castiel – Amelia's decline, Claire's status as a missing person, the life they've been living.

Dean's phone rings and he takes the excuse to step outside the ratty RV to answer it while Sam stays to coax more information out of Amelia, to get a current photo, what she might be wearing, possible friends or activities she likes, but out of the corner of his eye Sam watches his brother huddled into his leather jacket in the unrelenting cold January wind. Dean doesn't talk on the phone long before snapping it shut, and all the while his eyes rove around the RV and trailer park, before turning to the overcast gray sky.

"We're going to do whatever we can to get her back to you, Amelia." Sam says, resting a hand briefly on her stooped shoulder, before he sees himself out to join his brother, buttoning his jacket to keep out the wind. "Who called?"

Sam rubs his hands together and breathes warm air on them as he hunches down and waits for his brother to answer, prompting him again when Dean remains lost in his thoughts, offering only a hmm of response.

"Who was the call from, Dean?" Sam tries again.

"Bobby. What you'd get from her?" Dean glances at Sam, sees his brother's concerned look and lets his eyes wander again, not wanting his brother to read his troubled face. He should know better than to try. Sam frowns at him, but answers slowly, relaying Amelia's information back to him as if he hadn't been in the room for part of it.

Sam explains Amelia says she knows she saw Claire New Year's evening, That Claire's tips had been good and she shared them with her mom. He says according to Amelia that Claire didn't do much except work, and she is on winter break from her senior year of high school. That Claire doesn't have any friends, but that she is still having trouble overcoming her father's abandonment. He hands Dean a wallet size senior photo of Jimmy's daughter. "What else did Bobby say?" Sam nudges.

Dean holds the picture for a minute, then pushes it into his inside coat pocket. "He says the utility workers look like they got their eyes burned out. New Year's. Same time frame as Claire going missing." Dean's responding; he's just making more questions in Sam's mind than he is answering.

"Eyes burned out? Like Pamela?"

Dean looks at Sam who can see the worry creasing his brother's forehead, and he knows they're on the same page. Their New Year's hadn't been forgettable, and coincidence just never worked out in their favor. "Just like." He shuffles his hands into his side pockets, pulls the coat closer around him. "Bobby and Cas are gonna meet us at the utility worker's 'accident' site, right over there. Easy walking distance." Dean hands Sam the Impala's keys, without ceremony this time. "Drive baby over, wouldja? I think I need to walk. Bobby says Cas knows it angels, knows we're hiding something from him. "

"Dean, do you think …?"

"Sam, I think we never catch a break. Just – I'll meet you there in a minute. I'm just – I gotta wrap my head around this before I see Cas."

By the time Dean trudges into the overlook park, Sam has had time to park the car, which he leaves running for the heater. The coldness in the air at this Mississippi River overlook is even heavier and more damp than before. The wind blows up from the river with only a couple bare trees and asphalt to provide a barrier. The gusts shake the car as the door opens and Dean climbs into the passenger seat looking half frozen.

They only need to wait a couple minutes before Bobby's pick-up pulls in next to them and the older hunter and Cas slam out of it and into the back seat. Cas's face is like a thundercloud, every line of his body tense and angry, and Bobby looks like he may literally be biting his tongue to stop from talking. He gives Dean an apologetic nod.

"Can we go somewhere warm and get some coffee? Maybe some lunch? Discuss what we've learned?" Sam is trying to stop an eruption before it starts. Bobby agrees it's a good idea, and Dean, whose head is turned to stare back at his pissed off angel, nods.

"Why don't we pick something up. Head to the motel." This wasn't a conversation they wanted to have in public, if Castiel's expression was any indicator.

"I'll follow in the truck," Bobby lurches back out of the Impala and closes the car door with evident relief, and Sam almost wishes he could join him.

…

Bacon cheeseburgers, fries, and coffee were about as close as you could get to "comfort food" for them, but even handing Cas a mocha fails to fix the mood of the room as all four hunters take their places, Dean and Cas across from each other at the table, and Bobby beating Sam out for perching on the edge of the hotel couch and getting that few scant but important feet of distance between himself and the others.

Tossing their coats onto the radiator and settling heavily into his seat, Dean's trying to figure out how to ease into the subject, when Cas takes matters into his own hands.

"You are all three withholding information that directly affects me." His voice is a low, rumbling growl, his hands flat on the table, the paper still wrapped around his burger and his drink untouched. "You're resorting to transparent lies, and to. . ."

"Hold up, no one lied to you, Cas." Dean begins defensively, but Cas scowls at him, shaking his head slightly.

"Are you going to take the tact of defending misdirection and withholding information with me, Dean, after everything we've been through?" Well when he put it that way. . . Dean grimaces, shooting a look at Sam as if entreating him to help, but Sam's got a mouthful of burger (deliberately, the jackass) and leaves it to Dean to defend the decision. He doesn't even bother looking at Bobby for help. The older hunter's got his arms folded and overcoat pulled tight around him and his fed-suit, and is scowling at all three of them.

"I wanted to check it out before we dumped it on you, Cas." And it was _Dean's_ call. Bobby suggested leaving Cas on the sidelines, but in the end. . . when it came to the fallen angel, long before they ever become a relationship, even back when they were still squaring off as adversaries, and even farther back when Dean didn't quite believe in the angelic crap as much as he should have with the evidence staring him in the face and threatening to toss him back to hell, it was _his call_ how to deal with Cas.

Muscles of his jaw bunching visibly, blue eyes unblinkingly fixed on his lover, Castiel didn't miss the implication. Over half a year as a hunter at their side, and he was still being treated as an outsider in this family unit. Something between a liability and a potential threat. By _Dean_. Sam, he had broken, he had callously used as leverage against his brother. Bobby, he had killed Doctor Visyak and had hurt his boys. But _Dean, _after everything_. . ._

"Cas. . ." Sam begins, and Castiel swings his stare at the man he was coming to regard as his own brother, as closer than all but few of his own kin had ever been, his face schooled into unreadable lines. "We just needed you out of the way for a bit so we could. . ."

"It's Claire, man." Dean offers the information with the air of a man ripping off a bandage, getting the worst of it over with in a harsh burst, rather than drag out Cas's confusion and pain. He's become fluent now in Castiel's silences, as fluent as he's ever been in Sam's bitchfaces and Bobby's insults, and the only way to head this off is to get it out in the open. He places the senior portrait photo in front of Cas on the table. "Claire Novak. She disappeared New Year's'; those guys were right between where she lived and where she worked, and she's just gone. Alright?"

Cas puts it together immediately, and when he swings his gaze back to Dean he's _Castiel_ again, as much as he could be any more, face inscrutable, but Dean can tell there's a whirlwind of thoughts going on behind those blue eyes, taking him leaps and bounds farther than the boys have gotten yet. There are no denials, and no attempts to verbally sort out what they were all thinking. ". . . I need paper and pen."

Bobby pulls the notepad out of the breast pocket of his suit and tosses it on the table in front of Cas, who pulls the pen from the wire coil and flips to a clean sheet, eyes narrowed and hand moving in jerky motions as he scrawls across the page. Dean, Sam and Bobby exchange looks over the fallen angel's head and, as always, Dean is left with the task of voicing their thoughts to him. "What've you got for us, Cas. . .?"

"A list."

Dean waits, and Castiel refuses to elaborate further as he works. Now he was just _trying_ to be infuriating. Dean could understand a little payback, but really. . . "You gonna give us more to go on than that, Cas?" he grits out between his teeth, and doesn't flinch when Cas's eyes swing up from the paper, fixing on him, dark and intent as he rips the page out of the notebook and slides it across the table to him, pulling his hand back before Dean can touch him even in passing.

"That is a list of all of the living vessels of the line of Ishmael, as of the day I pulled you from perdition." And yes, maybe his reminder of _what he was _is a bit heavy-handed, but he is not going to be treated as a child to be coddled, any more than he is going to accept being a prisoner to their worries. "I have noted the likely candidates within the United States. Bobby, you have established yourself as a member of law enforcement in this area. You will use those resources to determine who else among them is missing."

"I will, will I?" Bobby asks, and there's a low challenge to his placid delivery that Castiel ignores entirely as he turns his attention to the next blank page, writing once again.

"You will." Reaching up to his collar, Castiel unknots his tie, pulling it free from his neck and tossing it onto the pile of coats absently, before ripping the next page out and sliding it to Sam. "That is a list of essentials that we will need to perform the ritual. . ."

"Whoa, what the. . . what _ritual_, Cas?" Dean asks, and he's genuinely getting pissed now. Cas is being a dick again, an angelic dick, and there's no apology to his gaze when he fixes it on Dean once again.

"Claire Novak was once a vessel of mine. I am no longer an angel, but it is possible that a line of communication may be open for me to exploit." That open line of communication between an angel and his vessel that he had explained so long ago to Dean as they stood beside Raphael's vessel and taunted him into showing himself. He can see Dean's worry, feel the rising ire of all the men in the room at him taking command, but he rises from the table regardless, only stopping when Sam chokes out what they all were thinking.

"So that's it, Cas? Straight to business, and you're taking over?" Sam Winchester, for all his faults, for his many mistakes and for what he represented, was a good man . . . but a frustrating one. Ducking his chin down, Castiel lets his breath out slowly, turning back to look at the little family he had been working so hard to fit into.

"Claire Novak, all of those men and women on that list, they are at risk because it was_ my _blood used to free Asmodeus and Ba'el. They are not of the correct line for my brother and my sister, otherwise. Claire Novak. . ." He realized it seemed stilted, forced, but the difference between addressing her familiarly or formally was a distance he_ needed_. That they needed to understand. His words are clipped, factual, laying out what they were all thinking. ". . . likely agreed to be a vessel in part because of my involvement in her life. Our hand-wringing about fault is not going to accomplish anything. And _yes_. I_ will_ take command."

These men, for all of their abilities, for all of their skills and their bravery, are not soldiers. They are not used to taking commands, and he knows they will push back against him. He raises his chin, standing beside the door, bearing straight and stiff, looking at each of them in turn. "You attempted to keep this from me for my protection. I am the most knowledgeable source you have. . ."

"We're not your garrison, Cas." Dean snaps, and he's on his feet as well, hands pressed to the table, leaned forward and watching Castiel with his own closed expression.

"No. You are_ not_." Cas confirms, and there's nothing agreeable to the affirmation. "You tried to bypass me because of personal involvement. I am a _soldier_, Dean, and either I am a _hunter_ now in my own right, or I am a liability to you and to Sam on the road. You need to decide that now." Turning, Cas opens the motel door and looks out into the cold evening, breath steaming the air, and he lets the Impala's keys dangle from between his fingers, from where he palmed them. "I am going to retrieve my bag from the car." he offers to everyone and no one, flatly laying out for people who found him untrustworthy what his aims were, before he left their sight.

He's still on his way to the Impala when Dean catches up to him, slamming a hand down on the trunk to close it before Cas can finish pulling his bag out. "Cas, listen. . ."

"No, Dean. _You_ listen." Cas's voice grates, exasperation coloring his words now along with anger. "It is the best use of our resources and our manpower. You do not have to like it, but even you are not so stubborn as to ignore that."

"Cas, damnit. . ." Leaning against the trunk, Dean runs a palm down his face, shaking his head slightly. "You're not a liability, and it's _not_ that I was trying to keep you out of this. And I get it, you're not my kid brother, but this is how I _work_. It's what I_ am_, and I'm _not_ frikkin' sorry for trying to protect you."

Castiel is staring at Dean as if contemplating how best to hit him, but Dean doesn't back down, straightening again to square off against him. "I have been fighting since before your. . ."

"_Goddamnit_, Cas! You're not a frikkin' _angel_ any more!"

Castiel shifts smoothly, and Dean finds himself hip-checked out of the way as Cas wrenches the trunk back open, hauling his bag onto his shoulder and stomping past him, fists bunched at his side. When Dean stalks after him to lay a hand on his shoulder, Cas twists with a sword-fighter's fluid grace, snatching Dean's wrist as he turns, and there's a moment where Dean is fairly certain Cas is going to take a swing at him.

Castiel physically restrains himself from doing so, against every instinct, but it's there in his stare as he scowls back at Dean.

"If you want to _protect_ me, Dean, you can do so while I set up the ritual." His voice is clipped, forced, and he half flings Dean's hand away from him again as he pushes past Sam, who has crowded into the door watching them, as if waiting to have to intervene. "This will make me vulnerable to them once again, and as you've pointed out, I am _not_ an _angel_ any more."

Dean watches the stiff set of Cas's shoulders until the fallen angel disappears into the motel room again, and he can feel his little brother's eyes on him as he growls under his breath.

The vending machine in the hall doesn't deserve the hit he throws at it, and his knuckles won't thank him for it.

. . .

Barefoot, head bowed, eyes closed, legs tucked into the lotus position, stripped down to his white dress shirt and charcoal slacks, Castiel is unnerving Dean in ways he couldn't even explain as he sat in the middle of a circle of holy fire, in roughly the same position Dean had found him in when he was talking orgies and group consciousness in the future. The holy fire was ostensibly to keep Asmodeus or Ba'el from returning the favor, popping right back into Cas's head as he went poking around in theirs, but more than anything it underscored Dean's _point._

Castiel could walk right out of that ring of fire, now, and stay planted even if Dean had to trigger the angel banishing sigil he'd already painted up with his blood on the refrigerator of the motel room. He'd stripped all his grace away on that long fall.

Bobby was out getting information on the rest of the list. Sam was back, fluttering around in their peripheral, keeping the ritual going, but since laying out the plan Castiel had been damned near vacant. He looks like a frikkin' empty vessel when he is meditating, and Dean had gotten enough of that at Storm Lake.

Eventually, the fallen angel slumps, and Dean can tell he's failed before he opens his eyes. Blood has spattered onto the white collar of his shirt, the same way it did every time he has attempted to lob his soul-shaped spark of grace around for telekinesis on their behalf. He takes a fire extinguisher to the circle, and for just a moment Cas allows himself to be braced upright before he can fall into the tight circle of flames.

A moment that is over quickly as he comes to himself again, stiffening in Dean's arms and drawing away.

"It is Asmodeus. I cannot get through to Claire." Drawing himself to his feet, Castiel shrugs off Dean's helping hand, and the rejection of it stings, draws the entire fight back between them. He stumbles to the nearest bed without bothering to change, and falls heavily onto the top of the bedspread. "I need to rest. I will try again in the morning, or try something else."

Dean was pretty certain already he wasn't going to like the "something else." He watches Castiel carefully as the angel slips into unconsciousness, and jerks his chin at Sam. "You might as well hit the sack, then, Sammy. I'll clean up."

It was a one-room night. Dean would be crashing on the couch.


	3. Chapter 3

_(Authors' note: The dream sequences follow. You knew it was called Enter Sandman for a reason. We should be able to post a dream a night for the next few days. – Enjoy. And review please. It's a lonely fanfiction verse when we don't hear from our readers.)_

_Every time when I look in the mirror_

_All these lines on my face getting clearer_

_The past is gone_

_It went by, like dusk to dawn_

_Isn't that the way_

_Everybody's got the dues in life to pay_

_I know nobody knows_

_Where it comes and where it goes_

_I know it's everybody sin_

_You got to lose to know how to win._

"**Dream on" – Aerosmith**

God is a wonderful teacher. His Father, God the Almighty, seems determined to test him until he passes - because failure is not an option. After a while, Castiel began to see it as a punishment to be brought back time and again from oblivion. No voice, no encouraging word, just brought back. Try again. Try again. He has never received instructions, never was left with the comfort of knowing he was on the right path. . . It stopped, just once, and he was granted his own human heaven. The greatest reward his Father could grant a broken creature like him, and he spent a few short months believing he must be on the right path until coincidence raised the questions again.

He was granted Heaven, but his paradise was cut short. He was needed.

He is back again, now, in that place of peace and perfection that is distinctly his and crafted from his memories, but now it is a dream and he is an observer. In the dream he is perfectly content – that feeling, that emotion – so brief, so alien to an angel. More than he deserved. Dean Winchester gave it to him: God merely siphoned off the memory and shaped it into an eternity.

Castiel has already made more memories. His heaven now might be a Christmas spent snowed in with Dean in a cabin in Whitefish, Montana, or one beautiful night in a tent at the foot of Angel's Landing in Zion National Park when Dean let go of vigilance and allowed Cas to hold him and keep him safe through the night. New beautiful memories, undeserved, but precious, and each just as likely to be his new Heaven.

When last he was in this moment, another invaded it, interrupted it, and his privacy felt stripped away even by a visitation he needed in order to bring him back from his Heaven and to the Earth again, and to Dean and Sam and nights on the road attempting to right the wrongs of his life. Now, he can feel another presence: this is his _dream_, not his Heaven, but the sense of wrongness is still prevalent.

This is _his_.

The soothing sense of healing is unwelcome here, and even as her touch flows over him gently, easing the pain of his bleeding grace, he can feel some part of him resisting it because it is not part of this scene. He recognizes her presence before she's fully slipped into his mind, the same presence he felt heal him in a cave in Utah: his sister, Asmodeus, "God's wrath," fallen in the rebellion against their father's will, along with the light bearer, Lucifer, and part of the soul of God, Ba'el.

She slips past his defenses because they are fragile, because he initiated the contact with the aborted ritual. . . and perhaps most of all, and because despite himself, despite months on Earth as close to human as an angel could get, he still instinctively reaches for a connection that can cause him nothing but harm.

And so Castiel, "God is his protection," angel of Thursday, guardian of the Righteous Man finds himself standing in a dream of his human heaven with a powerful angel their brother, Michael (God's General - whose very name challenges Who is like God?) once buried in the depths of the earth by the Mojave Desert. He doesn't want her here in this dream. Doesn't want her near Dean, near his love, near the emotions he still fears to share. Emotions he paid a high price to earn.

He is already attempting to will them away from his heaven by the time she is before him, earnest blue eyes familiar, honey blonde hair a curtain around a porcelain pale, delicate face.

"Why are you here?" Even now Castiel has only a bare understanding of human manners and greetings, but he makes no attempt to use them or to soften his abruptness: as her grace pours over him, dangerously soothing with the reestablishment of a connection to family, however far from Heaven she might be, he attempts once again to force a change of scenery, to put things on different footing between them, as he had throughout the failed ritual.

Her head canted faintly to the side, Asmodeus studies his face, takes his hand and they are standing on top of Angel's Landing in Zion National Park. The night sky is so clear and the altitude so high that it feels as though they are standing in the Milky Way. As if he's flying again.

"Is this better little brother? Does this make you less afraid?" Yes, but he will not admit to it, will not acknowledge the fear or the abatement of it. "I owe you much and feel so connected to you. My little broken brother. My hero, my savior. Come smile for me." Castiel can feel her spirit like a warm embrace, and he studies her as if looking for harm to the slight form she has come to inhabit, knowing he will find none. Here in his dream, so close to grace, her spirit shines brighter, almost making it difficult to see the vessel at all for the angel within.

"You should not have taken this vessel." He rumbles, and the swell of anger in him is unexpectedly fierce, and yet he can't identify why. Asmodeus offers a slight smile with Claire Novak's stolen face, but shakes her head, her hair swinging.

"She prayed for this, brother. You know that she did. She prayed to you for years, I can see it in her, and she dreamt of you." As if sensing Castiel's immediate denial, she raises her hand slightly. "You, Castiel. Not the father you took from her, but of you. You above all should understand what it is to have power coursing through you taken away so abruptly, I think." His words sour in his mouth, and Castiel looks away. "You left her feeling powerless. Weak. Forgotten. Abandoned. She accepted me wholeheartedly, immediately."

"What did you offer her, power? Power without control, and without restraint, and power that . . ."

"I told her I would help you." Asmodeus's words are gentle, honeyed, too formal to fall from Claire Novak's mouth naturally. She raises a hand to Castiel's face: he steps back abruptly, refusing the touch. "I swear I mean you no harm. I want only to talk to you about what I've seen since your blood released me from my prison. I want you to let me help you, but I think I understand you a little better seeing your dream. Another brave and daring thing you did in your rebellion, Castiel. For love? For a human? It is why the first Watchers fell, you know. Our Father said we spread sin to his new creation."

Castiel flinches. He does not want his love for Dean to be a sin.

Asmodeus paces a little away to give him his illusion of distance as she peers down into the darkness of Zion Canyon Valley. Her grace shines so brightly against the night sky. She has never been killed, never cast into hell, she simply waited in the prison Michael constructed for her. She has been disconnected from the Heavenly Host but has not lost her power: even after millions of years, she does not _doubt_. Like his brother Gabriel, she is strong and sure regardless of how far she strayed.

"This Earth is so different now. His creation so stained in sin." She gives a sad laugh. "Castiel, maybe our Father was right, but maybe it was too late even then. These humans seem drawn to sin. Now what do I do little brother?"

There is a trick here, he can feel it: a trick, or a trap, or something to cast him deeper into confusion. But she sounds so much like his brothers and sisters, crowded around him in Heaven, looking to him for answers. Looking to him to explain. He had been so naïve, then. His voice is rough, slow. "What do you mean?"

"I have been studying the board, Castiel. Everything is so out of place. Everyone is so lost. You have felt it, I know: the Host is overwhelmed, the demons can bide their time, pick them off one by one." The demons _Lucifer_ created. With help. Castiel doesn't have to say it, his glower conveys enough. Who knows this better than one of the creatures placed by Lucifer upon the earth to tarnish humanity. She turns slightly to look at him, and there is something almost pitying to her gaze. "We did not make them flawed, Castiel. We merely pointed out the cracks. And these demons are led not by our brother, but by another demon. Crowley. He plays the game too well: Heaven will be lost, destroyed. Gabriel leads the Host. . ." She smiles fondly, shaking her head slightly. "The archangel who left, who abandoned us all to our fighting, come home to try and save them. And within Hell, there are _two hundred_ fallen Grigori, cast into the pit, waiting in Hell for their opportunity to rise as Azazel did. Our brothers are trapped, Lucifer and Michael in his prison. . . All this chaos in Heaven, in Hell, on Earth," Asmodeus sighs with grief. "All this suffering, and our Father stays gone. How long did you search for our Father, Castiel? How long did you struggle alone?"

Castiel thinks about his fruitless search for his Father, but then he thinks of God's miracles. He and the Winchesters were saved by God's own hand. It is hard to not believe when you have been given your own miracle. Given another chance.

"You do not have to be alone brother." Asmodeus says her voice a caress. "How long will you insist on trying to live a lie? You are an angel, Castiel, an angel, not one of these humans."

Castiel looks away from Asmodeus. There are times when it feels his entire being cries out to be connected to the Heavenly Host again. To hear the humming of the choir that was a constant in his existence for so long. But he killed so many, caused so much pain, is still trying to atone.

A small voice in his head says that he is far too happy to be penitent; living is blissful contentment, wanting nothing more than what he has with Dean, reveling in belonging with the small family of hunters. He knew it was wrong. And today. . .

"I want no power Hell can offer me." Castiel finally grinds out, turning from her, but a small hand on his shoulder stills him: she steps back into his line of sight, her delicate face turned up to his and there is something dark to her gaze, now, something forbidding. "Castiel. . . you took that power already, to fight this war. You know this, you cannot pretend it is something we forced upon you. You embraced the power of souls from Hell. . ."

_How about I float you a little loan. Say, fifty large?_

"I don't know. . ."

"You_ do_ know. You embraced the gift, and you took the power . . . "

_Fifty thousand souls from the pit._

"You brought it among the Host, in a way none of us ever dared."

_You can take them up to Heaven, make quite a showing._

The dream will not stay in focus. Fear, guilt, loathing have gripped him tight, a vice around him. He forces out the words, as she attempts once more to soothe him, to ease the pain of his severed connection from Heaven, of his mangled and bleeding Grace.

"I am _not_ alone. I just want to stay on the side of Righteousness,"

Asmodeus laughs, and it rings through his mind, sweet and bright, and alight with mockery, and the sound follows him into consciousness. "Righteousness or your Righteous Man, my brother?"


	4. Chapter 4

_Half my life_

_Is books written pages_

_Live and learn from fools and_

_From sages_

_You know it's true, oh_

_All these things you do come back to you_

_Sing with me, sing for the years_

_Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears_

_Sing with me, just for today_

_Maybe tomorrow, the good lord will take you away_

"_Dream On" by Areosmith_

In his dreams the Impala never runs low on gas, the oil light never comes on, and he doesn't have to worry about wear on the tires. In his dreams, he is always driving but sometimes Sam is shotgun and sometimes it's Cas. They are always, all three and sometimes Bobby too, in the big Chevy. He is driving and they are safe. Sleeping peacefully as he directs his baby along endless, peaceful roads. He slips deeper into this, his favorite dream, sighing aloud deeply and under the thin spare blanket and into the sagging couch cushions for warmth.

These are Dean's good dreams. The nights when he is not plagued by nightmare of what he became in Hell – about he is afraid he will still become. He spent ten years becoming a monster. A demon other demons fear. Those are his nightmares of Hell – not the thirty years he spent being skinned, disemboweled, physically taken apart in every painful way imaginable. Even that did not break him – the emotional dismantlement did. Meg is right that the best torturers never need to get their hands dirty. He knows how to do that now, and the memories give him nightmares even when he is awake if he cannot push them away soon enough.

Those thoughts do not belong in his car dreams – his baby is his home, his safe place; and he loves it best when he dreams of his home filled with the people he loves. This dream though, as dreams do, changes and soon he is alone in his car. The radio comes on, all static. It grows dark outside, an oppressive almost sentient darkness that the high-beams of the car can't touch, and he is forced to stop. Soon he is sitting in a dark silent parked car.

And then the Almighty frikkin' Archangel Michael is there in his dream; and Michael looks like a young John Winchester. He knows instinctively who he is looking at, who is looking back at him through his father's eyes, in the same way he knows that it's a dream.

"Where the fuck's Adam?" Dean has always thought the best defense was a good offense, and pissing people off is Dean's default setting whenever he is upset-if _he's_ upset, _they_ should be too. Michael pisses Dean off further by not answering immediately. Instead, he sits back a little and looks Dean up and down, like a farmer looking over a bull at auction. Dean's hands curl into fists.

"Dean. Another long overdue conversation I think."

"Fuck off, Michael. No conversation until you tell me what's up with Adam. Why're you wearing my dad?"

Michael shakes his head at Dean, a half smile on his mouth. "You haven't changed, Dean. Still irreverent, still coming out fighting. But I'll answer your question. Adam is – as he has been – in heaven. I was just using his recreated body … with his permission. Lucifer and I are in true form in the cage. As for John, this is just an illusion within a dream. I could appear as anyone here, but I wanted you to know it was me immediately. Truce."

Dean knows he is in a dream, but he's still shaking. "Get rid of the cloud cover. If we're gonna talk, I want to be driving."

Michael quirks an eyebrow at Dean, but he realizes that driving gives Dean a semblance of control that he needs right now. The darkness is gone and Dean puts the Impala back in drive and moves along the road. Dean drags in a deep breath between lips that feel frozen in place and into a mouth too dry. "Okay, okay. What are you doing in my dream? How are you even _doing _this?"

Michael sighs, stretches out his long legs in the front floorboards, turns his head and goes back to studying Dean again. "You and I weren't meant to be on different sides, Dean. I wish I could go back to our first meeting and take back some of what I said. You were so –Dean - and I was being an arrogant dick, wasn't I? Throwing down gauntlets to you, telling you how things had to be. I underestimated the free will my Father gave you, told you it was an illusion, and I underestimated how stubborn you can be when you're being righteous, which you can't help being."

Dean's attention is on the never-ending road, driving smoothly in this car that is his outer shell, gaze in the distance. A frown crosses his face. "Are you gonna keep yakking away, or are you actually planning on answering my questions?"

Michael gives a forced chuckle and shakes his head, and for a moment he looks thoughtful. "I am in your dream to talk to you, and the cage is weakening. It was built to hold one Archangel, not two." He turns partly on the bench seat, shifting to face Dean, watching him carefully. "Dean, you told me once that my brother and I should seek therapy to get over our "beef" with each other. Well, locking us together in the cage forced us to speak. I told you then that I loved my little brother as much as you do yours. It is still true."

"You two do some bonding over torturing my little brother?" Dean's jaw muscles are clenching in anger as he thinks about Sam. About what these so-called angels put him through.

Michael's gaze falls to his hands, clasped lightly in his lap. "That was badly done. Yes, you have a right to be angry at that."

"Thanks for your fucking permission, dickhead."

Michael's jaw bunches, much as John Winchester's used to when he wore an older face, when it was his father grinding his teeth before an inevitable outburst. "I, too, have a right to be angry. Your brother _dragged_ me into that cage. Locked me in Hell. _You_ know, Dean, how unfair that is. To end in Hell for doing what is right."

Dean snorts. "Don't start trying to compare, you sonofabitch. I was stretched out being tortured on Hell's racks, by Hell's master of the craft. You're in a private room with your brother." He turns and stabs his finger at Michael, and if this weren't a dream he wasn't sure he'd be able to keep from lashing out, no matter how futile that would be against a creature like Michael. "Any torture going on there you were on the _giving_ end. _Willingly._ Nobody made you do a damned thing." He turns back, puts both hands back on the steering wheel, practically growls out his next question. "What the fuck are you doing here, Michael? What do you want from me?"

"I need what I have always needed from you, Dean, and I have never lied to you. I will take care of the body, put your soul in safe keeping, but I need you to say yes when I get out of the cage." As if sensing Dean's objection, he continues smoothly. "But not for an Apocalypse. I need to tie up a few loose ends, but then I need to return to Heaven and fight Crowley's hoard. I'll put all the angels back with me. Earth will go back to being a non-interference zone."

_The angels aren't listening. They just. . . left! Gave up!_

It was what he'd asked for, in the past. It was what he'd cursed in the future.

_I think it had something to do with the other angels leaving. When they bailed. . ._

It was what broke Castiel, finally, his choice to stay when the other angels pulled out. To stay with _him_.

The doubt and despair crash into Dean again, smothering his anger. Every change they've made, and it's still not enough to change the outcome.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

_Dream On Dream On Dream On_

_Dream until your dream comes true_

_Dream On Dream On Dream On_

"**Dream on" by Areosmith**

It has been a long time now since anyone has touched Sam Winchester gently, without it being merely a precursor to sex. For half a year now, he has contented himself with playing third wheel in another's relationship, settling for the occasional one-night-stand himself. And it's okay. It's good. His big brother deserves some happiness, and if it takes Sam accepting sharing his brother's attention then. . . well, he'll adjust. Dean deserves some happiness and Castiel's a friend.

But he can't deny that watching Dean fall in love reminds him of Jess, and of having that for himself.

So when soft hands run gently down Sam's back in his dream, tracing his muscles to the dip of his lower back, then sweep back up, stopping to rub circles into his tense and tired shoulders, he doesn't fight it. The caress continues slowly bringing Sam to consciousness and semi-arousal, and he rolls onto his side, reaching for Jessica again.

Lucifer raises his hands off of Sam's skin and waggles his fingers in a wave, flashing white teeth in a smile. "Hi Sam."

Sam jackknifes up from the bed, scrambling to press his back to the headboard, hazel eyes wide and panicked. He can see Castiel curled into himself on the motel bed, blood drying on his collar and the motel bedspread flipped up from below to settle over him: Dean's work. Dean, who is sleeping on the couch, bow legs dangling over the thinly padded arm. It is the same crappy hotel room he is sharing with them, and he is pretty sure he's still sleeping too.

He's been pretty sure of things in the past, though. Old fears swell up within him, scratching at the wall Castiel had bricked back into place for Dean's sake, bolstered by his will as a god, but the fear is sharp and the memories of his days of recovery at Bobby's quick to the surface.

He can't be losing his mind again. He can't.

"No. No. No. No! How … How are you here? Why?" Sam is backing away, trying to think where Castiel's angelic blade is, how quickly he could reach it.

"I missed you, Sam," Lucifer, looking like Nick before his body started to wear thin, says as he backs up holding his hands in clear view. "Just here to talk."

Lucifer makes shushing noises, trying to calm Sam down, and the look of concern on his face is painfully genuine. It always was though, during the months leading up to the Apocalypse, the Sympathy for the Devil ploy. "Come on, Sam. Sit and hear me out. No violence, no anger. I'm not mad at you anymore. I'm even sorry for hurting you. I never really wanted to hurt you. You know that. You know that. And you know I've never lied to you. I will never lie to you."

"Don't touch me!" Sam is still hissing in anger, fear, and shame too deep to find words. He is hyperventilating in his sleep, and he's trying to make himself wake up. "He's not really here. He's not really here." Sam is chanting to himself, pushing on an old scar on his hand that doesn't even hurt anymore, but in panic. Lucifer looks at him sadly.

"I can . . . well, I can help, Sam. I am truly sorry. I just never expected you to be so determined. I flipped out. I took it out on you. But, please, just listen a minute, Sam. Give me a minute to explain."

"Dominus misericordiam habere. Dominus misericordiam Habere. Christo misericordiam habere." Sam tries again in English, "Lord have mercy on me…." Lucifer is no demon: an exorcism will not work. Sam is focusing on the cadence of the words, using it to anchor him, trying to force the dream to change. He knows, now, from his experience with Dream Root how better to command his own mind, but Lucifer sits beside him on the bed nonetheless, stubbornly present. With an almost pitying expression on his face, Lucifer reaches over and engulfs him in an embrace. He holds him, rocking slightly, restraining him from violence.

"Stop. You're breaking my heart here, Sam. My Father isn't listening, and you know that. Just…stop." The archangel, the devil himself and the face from all of Sam's worst nightmares, is holding onto the young man one who is shaking so badly that it's visible . . . and Sam doesn't expect to live through this, and he doesn't know what he did so wrong that he deserves an eternity of the punishment of Hell – how he could have been damned to thoroughly by Azazel's actions instead of his own.

"I'm gonna put you under a little more deeply, Sam. Just hold on. I'll take care of you," Lucifer is murmuring, and he sounds so caring, so sincere, but he always had. Before Sam said yes. Before he jumped into the cage for them both. Before the cage, and hell, and torture. Sam doesn't think, knowing what he knows now, that he could do it again.

The calm hits him like a drug, with a nearly paternal graze of lips to his forehead, just beneath the fringe of his hair. Even now, he knows how wrong that is. If this is his dream, his mind, then he should be the one in control of it, and the outside influence is chilling. Lucifer is sitting on a chair beside the bed, holding his hand in both of his, like a hospital visitor, concerned and caring, and even in his sleep Sam can taste the sharp, acrid tang of bile on the back of his tongue.

"Better, now? Calmer?" Lucifer is still stroking his hand, soothing him. "I really hope you can still hear me, Sam. I had to let you sink so far into sleep. I should have known. Should have thought. For someone who said he never wanted to hurt you, I really screwed up, huh? Poor kid."

Sam's eyes are open, but he looks almost catatonic, unresponsive. "I'm going to fix this, Sam. Take away this fear and sorrow until they are just tiny little memories that can't hurt you anymore. Because I did this, and I was wrong. Then, I'll come talk to you again when you're a little stronger because I need to ask to share space one more time, for just a little while. The demons are overwhelming the Heavenly Host, Sam. And my Father's not here to help us or tell us what to do or to save you, or Dean. I need to get out here for a little while. Work with my brother, like you work with yours."

Lucifer lowers Sam's hand, leaving it resting on his chest, and bends over to kiss him once again, lightly, on his forehead, and he keeps the tinge of sorrow in his face and in his voice that twists something dark and disgusted within Sam. "Rest now. I'll be back."

In a dingy motel room in St. Louis, Missouri, three men wake at once. There is a crash as Dean tumbles off of the couch and hits the particle-board table, cursing loudly. Castiel jolts bolt upright in the bed, blue eyes wide, and the angelic blade is in his hand from beneath the sleeve of his rumpled dress shirt before he has time to realize it. Sam gasps like a swimmer drawing air into burning lungs, and his eyes sting with tears, and he rolls to his side on the bed, head hanging over as if he's considering being sick.

After a tense moment, Cas slaps the light on the nightstand. From his position half-sprawled on the floor, Dean takes in the situation, and clears his throat, voice rough.

"Well that was just. . . fucking awesome. Guessin' I'm not the only one to get a visit from the ghost of Apocalypses past."

"_Dream until your dream comes true."_


	6. Chapter 6

(Author's note: The idea of the scrolls listing the names and family lineage of vessels comes from the Supernatural: War of the Sons novel by Rebecca Dessertine and David Reed, sixth of the tie-in novels, published 2010.)

Chapter 6

_St. Anger 'round my neck_

_St. Anger 'round my neck_

_He never gets respect_

_St. Anger 'round my neck_

"**St. Anger" by Metallica**

**. . . **

Dean Winchester's first drink in weeks burns as he shoots the liquor back, comforting in its familiarity and bitter with the knowledge that were his brother in a better state of mind, he'd be looking at him with those affronted puppy dog eyes, as if one drink in this kind of situation equated to falling off the wagon and becoming a raging alcoholic.

He'd never really considered himself on any wagon. He was just abstaining out of solidarity with Cas.

Cas, who had relocated to perch himself on the edge of Sam's bed, asking him low, urgent questions and watching his brother with an expression of such earnest worry that in other circumstances Dean be heartened to see that the fallen angel genuinely cared about his family. It was a far cry from the impassive being who'd cracked Sammy's gourd the first time around just to get to Dean, and only fixed his wall to prove a point to Dean. Turning, plastic motel cup in hand, he looks at the pair of them and, as if sensing Dean's regard, Castiel looks up again and meets Dean's gaze across the room.

The angel's eyes flick to the cup in his hand, then back to his eyes, but there's none of the judgment that Sam would have given him and somehow that's worse. Dean shrugs a shoulder silently, as if answering an unspoken question, and Cas nods once shallowly and then rests a hand on Sam's shoulder, and this time his voice is loud enough to carry.

"He is still in the cage, Sam. For now, at least." Castiel's idea of comfort was as always pretty inept, but at least he was honest. Offering promises that Satan wouldn't get his hands on Sam again would have been an easily dismantled lie. There were no guarantees any more.

"How the hell did he do that, Cas?" They always turned to Castiel for answers, and once he may have had them. Millions of years of knowledge and experience are wasted when they have, all three of them, ensured that nothing that was happening was anything that could have been anticipated, nothing that could have been foreseen even by angels. They ripped up the script, and everything after. . . well, they were making it up as they went along.

Looking at Sam's face, his wide hazel eyes. . . looking up to see Dean watching him just as carefully, Castiel draws a deep breath and frowns, trying to think, to piece together the conversations, to determine how he would have done it. And it was disconcerting that he could slip into the mindset of his siblings who had fallen so far.

(How much farther were they, really, than he?)

"Ba'el and Asmodeus are helping them whisper through the cracks. . . a sliver of their consciousness, but it is a sign that the cage is weakening. I believe it was already weakened after being opened: the sixty-six seals were broken, and of them the most important. . . they cannot be implemented again."

"Lilith." Sam sighs, and runs a hand down his face. Dean considers his whiskey for a moment in silence, before answering for his brother's sake what he knew Castiel wasn't saying.

"And me. First and last, right?" Castiel ducks his head down, and it's answer enough for the Winchesters. The two seals it had taken them to crack, the two dominos that had to fall a specific way, at a specific time, by their hands. "So, we crammed two archangels into a cage designed to hold one, with busted locks already. Right? So how's it held this long?"

"It can only be opened from the outside." Castiel rumbles quietly. "Crowley has helped secure it within Hell, it was. . ." Part of his arrangement, as God. ". . . beneficial to him."

"Door only swings one way." Sam sighs. "So Hell shoved a doorstop there."

"And Heaven doesn't have the power to secure it, any longer." Castiel agrees. And that was on him.

It's a morose room that Bobby finds himself in moments later. Dean hands him his own whiskey as he opens the door for him, and the older hunter surveys the faces within and screws his face up in a look of frustration. "Oh, balls. What now?" He asks of Dean, whose abrupt message roused him from his own room.

"Sammy's got Lucy popping into his head, Michael's stopping in on my dreams, and it turns out the angels aren't as far in the outfield as we hoped." Dean huffs, gesturing at his brother as he throws himself heavily down onto the couch, resting his elbows on his knees.

Bobby frowns, slowly settling at the table, and shoots a look at Cas. "What about you, Feathers? You get dreamwalked too?"

It was the moment of truth. Castiel had let the boys focus on their own dreams, had encouraged it, had said nothing of his own. Looking at the two Winchesters, he swallows heavily and looks away without meeting Dean's eyes, shaking his head slightly.

"No. No nightmares."

…

Frowning at the closed bathroom door, Dean lets the sound of Sam explaining the dreams to Bobby wash over him, white noise and uncomfortable implications, and the knot in the pit of his stomach twists again. In the bathroom, he can hear the sink running, the splash of water into the porcelain basin. He doesn't realize that the conversation has gone quiet again until Bobby repeats his name, jerking his attention back to his family. "What?"

Bobby watches Dean with a frown pulling down the corners of his mouth, and it seems emphasized rather than obscured by his scruffy beard. "You checked outta the conversation a couple of turns back, boy."

"Yeah. No. ummm, Sorry. I'm here." Dean mutters, and shifts on the couch. Sam is paying attention, now, though, eyes making the same trip from the drink in his hand to the look on his face, broad forehead drawing down into creases. It was one drink, and his brother was worrying. "I'm fine, Sammy."

"Don't you think there's been enough bullshit dropped into this mess already?" Bobby asks bluntly, unmoved when Dean's attention swings to him, razor sharp. After a moment, he jerks his thumb at the door, his voice low. "What, you think you're the only one that can read a tell, Dean? You forgetting who taught you poker?"

"You noticed that too?" Dean asks, and Sam looks between the two of them, trying to keep up.

"Why do you think I send him to get washed up?" Bobby mutters, rolling his eyes. It was like the boys forgot who it was that raised the issue of Castiel lying to them the last time. "Little blood on the shirt and face, and he's been in there a while now. We can't be going into this knowing only half the story, and if he ain't going to be square with us we can't have him in it, and you know that whether you like it or not."

Closing his eyes, Dean presses his thumb and forefinger over the lids, and nods slightly, pushing himself to his feet and leaving the cup of whiskey on the now dangerously canted table. "Gimme ten minutes."

Bobby rumbles an agreement, and calls out quietly at Dean's back, as he stoops down to drag a clean shirt out of his bag for Cas "Ten minutes then back out here either way. We don't have time for the lovey dovey stuff, we've got work to do and we need you both in this."

"Plus, we don't want to have to hear." Sam adds dutifully, and Dean huffs humorlessly, flicking his brother off as he straightens.

"Cas, buddy, I'm coming in." He warns as he raps his knuckles against the door once, and twists the knob when he gets a rumbled response.

Castiel stands with his hands braced on the sink, blue eyes fixed on the cracked mirror above it. His face it wet, dark tendrils of hair stuck to his forehead from scooping the water onto his face to clean off the blood, and Dean stops to take him in, hand on the door knob and eyes travelling the pale expanse of Castiel's chest, the dark ink of his tattoo that branded him as one of them, and the thin lines of scars that marked him as other, the clear indicator that he wasn't an angel any more.

He hands the clothes in a bundle over to Cas, as the fallen angel turns to face him. "You gonna come clean with me on your own, Cas, or you gonna make me have to ask?"

If he hadn't been sure before, the wide eyed look that crumpled into guilt would have been answer enough. Grinding his teeth together, Dean leaned against the closed bathroom door, arms folded, and even if he hadn't been blocking the door it was clear that Cas wasn't escaping the conversation this time.

"Asmodeus." Castiel offers, finally, fingers twisting in the soft fabric of the well-washed blue t-shirt that Dean had given him, and he lets his breath out in a low, weary sigh. "I believe she was anchoring their ability to reach out to you by my proximity. She pinpointed my consciousness as she blocked the ritual, and simply traced it back. I should have anticipated the possibility and found some way to ward it prior to. . ."

"Prior to wiping out? We're breathing, and they were gonna find us anyway. Cas, you were fried. It happens."

"Yes. I am well aware. Because I'm 'not an angel any more.'" Castiel growls, and the entire fight of before is between them again, tense and unresolved. "I do not need any further reminders of. . ."

"You're still hiding shit from us, Cas." Dean interrupts, accusatory, and Castiel's teeth click together as he snaps his jaw shut mid-word, looking away as he drags the t-shirt over his head. "You gonna tell me what's actually going on? They talk a good game, trust me, I get that. What'd she offer, to mojo you back up?"

Castiel's silence answers, and Dean rests his head back against the door, closing his eyes. Of course she was. They were just sweetening the pot. If he could fix Cas, and Michael kept to his word. . .

"When Crowley first approached me, he made me an offer." Castiel begins, out of nowhere, and Dean opens his eyes to find Castiel sitting himself down on the edge of the tub, elbows across his knees, eyes distant. "No. First, he played to my pride. I told you as much. And then he offered me the power to fight back."

Pride, Dean. It was pride.

Dean doesn't ask how it's relevant. Pushing off of the door, he joins Cas on the edge of the tub, stretching his legs out in the enclosed space, sock-covered feet pressed against the door, leaving a foot between him and Castiel on the lip of the tub. "The purgatory souls."

"Yes and no. That came later, we needed to find them. Needed. . ."

"Sam and I to do the dirty work for you." Dean puts in, and Cas ducks down his chin. This was taboo, an old wound they tried not to pick at, because forgiveness did not undo the past. He couldn't explain the present without it, though.

"He gave me fifty thousand souls from Hell, Dean. . . and I took them into myself." It would be no use dancing around the facts. "I took power from Hell. I made myself like Asmodeus and Ba'el . . . like Lucifer . . . and I brought it to Heaven and began my civil war, and my power was as much Hell's as Heaven's. I believe Asmodeus and Ba'el's grace responded to me in Utah because I had already created that connection."

Silence follows the confession, and Dean watches Castiel study the ugly pattern of the shower curtain bunched beside him, unsure how to respond to that. Dean remembers what it was like to join with the power of hell. He's not judging his angel.

"Asmodeus is not offering to fix me, Dean. She cannot restore my Grace to me. My grace is. . ." Castiel's snort is bitter, and he turns to face Dean, the twelve inches between them a chasm he had no idea how to close. "Dean, you hold more of my Grace than I do any longer. Sam does, to an extent. Gabriel. Balthazar. Anna. She cannot give me back what I once was, she can only offer to reforge that connection to Hell, without the filter of my Grace to protect me. I would not become like them, and I would not become what I once was. My choice is to fight, or to slowly become like Azazel."

"Fuck that," Dean's emphatic interruption wins a wry, humorless laugh out of Castiel, and Goddamnit Dean hated that sound. Every single time he heard it, he was thrust back into 2014, and he just couldn't see any outcome that left Cas as . . . Cas. "So lying to us in there. . ." He indicates the room behind the closed door with a twist of his hand.

"Your dream, Sam's dream. . . they are what we must address. Asmodeus's attempts to manipulate me into power again. . ." Castiel lets his breath out, the tension leaving his shoulders as he gives a faint, boneless shrug. "I believe it will be the last time she tries that tactic. She knows now that I cannot, will not become. . . that. . . and why."

Because of Dean. Castiel already viewed himself as the monster: he'd made that clear time and again, no matter how much his guilt and his self-loathing put Dean's teeth on edge. Taking that final dive, falling the rest of the way. . . he'd been stumbling down that path for a while now, as he saw it. But Asmodeus had the right of it. He had his Righteous Man, and that would keep him from that final step.

Dean closes that distance for them, after a moment, reaching his hand out to tangle his fingers with Castiel's, hands linked against the cold ceramic of the tub. A silent promise. "Maybe it doesn't have to be that way."

Something about Dean's tone sharpens Castiel's gaze, and he narrows his eyes suspiciously, before unfolding himself from the tub, using their linked hands to pull Dean up with him. "We need to talk. All of us."

Their fight was still not entirely resolved. . . but as Bobby had said, there was work to be done.

And Castiel was fairly certain they were about to argue again.

**. . . **

Bobby and Sam look up expectantly when Dean and Cas come back into the main room. There's a little bit of shuffling which ends with everyone seated: Sam and Dean at the small table, Bobby and Cas perched on the ends of beds. Dean snorts when he realizes that his brother has cleared away the whiskey, Bobby has a tumbler of it but Sam has pressed a hot cup of coffee into Dean's hands.

Just as well. He didn't figure he'd be getting any more sleep tonight anyway.

Cas clears his throat, and glances awkwardly at Sam and at Bobby, who are watching him too carefully. He remembers these looks, remembers their insistence that Dean was blind to his lies—and remembers that he had proved them right in the suspicions. "I apologize. I was not entirely honest. Yes, I dreamed, but it was not a nightmare; it was Asmodeus trying to cajole me into joining their side. I was not trying to hide it as much as I was trying to deal with Sam and Dean's state of mind first. I am sorry if that offended anyone." Cas looks at each of the men in turn. He is relieved when Bobby gives him a nod, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders. "I am sorry, too, that in helping Sam…" and at this Cas turns his gaze steadily to Dean "…I think I have neglected to plumb completely your dream, Dean. And, frankly, you worry me the most as I expect Michael has offered you some way to be a self-sacrificing hero. And you are probably considering it, again."

"Gee, Cas. Why don't you tell me how you really feel." Dean mutters, palming the back of his neck.

Now all three men are glaring at Dean who tries to give them back as innocent a look as he can muster. Sam growls at him from across the table. "Please, tell me you're not considering trying to make a deal, Dean. Tell me you aren't still running around with such low self-esteem that you don't realize how much we need you here and alive." The elder Winchester isn't quick enough to words: Sam stands so rapidly that the table rocks as his chair falls backwards. He leans over directly in Dean's face, palms planting on the table, looming, not letting Dean escape his scrutiny as Sam reads him.

Sam knows Dean better than anyone, better than Dean knows himself. After all his childhood years of never seeing the fear, shame, or sadness in his brother, after losing him too often, Sam has made it a point to study his brother. Yeah, part of the necessity is that Dean hides things even from himself, but the reason Sam made the study was that he had finally come to understand how damaged by his past Dean was. He had hoped that this past few months had given his big brother more to live for. Sam grounds out an order; "Tell us what Michael offered and don't even try to leave anything out."

Bobby moves over to the table, rights the chair, and sits on looking as intently as Sam at Dean's face, both of them ready to read any tells to whether they are getting the whole true story. They'd been hunters too long: they were falling into old habits, good cop and bad cop, one standing, on sitting, leaving Dean as the unfortunate subject of their interrogation. "Well, ya idjit?"

"Umm, Adam's safe….yeesh, I know that's not exactly what you meant, but it's been bothering me, I guess. Adam stepping in 'cause I wouldn't. Suffering in my place, and he's just a kid. Never really got to know him, but … he's a little brother, ya know?" Dean looks up sees a hint of understanding in Sam's eyes, before the hazel glints into steel again. Sam thinks to himself that he should have known Dean was worrying about that. Cas tilts his head, realizing that he hadn't thought to assure Dean of Adam's safety, another pang of guilt for letting Dean carry one more burden needlessly.

Firmly tapping on the table, Bobby breaks the silence. "Stop looking to throw us off the trail, boy. What did Michael offer you that you are so obviously considering? And don't try any of those innocent looks on me; that stopped working by the time you were ten."

Dean gulps from his coffee, draws in a deep breath and tells them, blurting it all out quickly, but not trying to hold anything back. "He promised it would be temporary borrowing. That he'd keep me safe and the body safe, too. That he wasn't going apocalyptal …that he just needs it to tie up some loose ends. He said he and Lucifer would defeat Crowley, and then the Heavenly Host would go back to non-interference on Earth."

Bobby narrows his eyes further at him. "And did you believe him?"

"Well, yeah, Bobby. I mean, why wouldn't I?" Dean stammers out the question. "And, honestly, how many more options do we have?"

"Well, did he say why he needed you to say yes at all?" Bobby's voice is gentle. Good cop.

Castiel's voice is low, somber and steadying as he seconds Bobby. "Did Michael or Lucifer say to either of you why, if they just want to deal with other angels and demons, they needed their Earthly vessels?"

Sam grows thoughtful, trying to think past the gut-wrenching fear having Lucifer near him created. "Lucifer didn't say anything more. A temporary loan. Help Heaven fight Crowley." Dean thinks more, and shakes his head silently.

Bobby and Cas look at the two brothers, both hanging their heads, guilt dripping off them like sweat. Over their heads, the older men exchange a look. Cas nods, speaks gently, but his voice grows sharper with every statement, though no louder. "Do either of you really think they would give you back your body? After what Sam proved? After they've been locked in a cage because of what you two did? Because even if you are that foolishly trusting, Bobby and I are not. Even were they genuine in their concept of 'temporary'. . . what is time to an angel? The moment you gave yourself to them as vessels, they would hollow you out: they would not risk your soul, your consciousness, bucking their control once again. You would be _dead_ from the moment they took you over. The answer is no, now and forever._ No._ Neither of you is to consider it as a possible solution. Do you hear me?"

"Ya understand us?" Bobby chimes in. With nods from both the boys, Bobby drains his whiskey, but decides not to ask for more. Instead, he turns back toward Cas, the two older men in silent agreement that the Winchesters needed looking out for at the moment. Bobby starts thinking out loud. He is muttering about the properties of African Dream Root and maybe taking turns staying together in dreams, figuring that they were safer when none of them were left to fight off manipulation on his own. Rejects that as leaving their bodies too vulnerable. He dismisses the antidote against Djinn induced sleep, and that against succubae. Considers sleeping on holy ground, but dismisses that idea because it won't deter Michael.

Bobby removes his hat and scrubs at his head with his fingers, asks Cas. "If I remember correctly angel and demon sigils are not as effective against archangels and useless against dream walking. Is there some kind of ward we can use to keep them out of the boys's noggins? A rite?"

"There are. . . sigils that can be used." Castiel grinds out slowly, and Dean shoots a look at Cas, brow knitting. The memories of Iowa are sharp and clear: Cas's last night on earth, until Heaven had intervened. Cas has been considering their options as well, knows that they all – even him – need to sleep. "It's not just the psychic connection. They have found us that way; and if they get out of the cage, they will show up in person. It would be beneficial if we knew who the other possible vessels are, too. Warn them against saying yes."

Although Sam and Dean recovered the War Scroll after being sent back to New York circa 1954, they had learned the anti-apocalypse plan was really just a list of the bloodlines of Angelic vessels; the 'battle plan' was to eliminate all the vessels so that the angels could never fight on the earth without causing great difficulty to innocents. Cas had later told them that angels do not share their vessels willingly, nor the knowledge of whose bloodline their true vessels originate. And yet, Castiel had imparted that knowledge freely to these three men, a sign of trust.

"We didn't get a chance to memorize that war scroll," Dean shakes his head in sorrow. "They've already got Claire from your line. You have any luck looking up those names Cas gave you, Bobby?"

Bobby frowns, looking down at his hands, and sighs. "Jimmy Novak had an uncle, went missing 'bout a week ago. Rest of them are accounted for right now, near as I can tell, but short of calling all of 'em and saying 'anyone come calling in your dreams recently,' I'm up a creek as to who we've gotta worry about, if any of 'em."

It's as if Sam has decided that he would have to be strong enough to protect his brother this time, as he knows his brother still blames himself for Sam saying yes, and so his voice is steady and firm again. "We need a safer place to stay where we can put up angel and demon sigils. We need a way to recover our lost memories of the war scroll – try to contact as many as we can because even if they don't take us, they need some kind of vessel. We need dream root. Until we get better situated, maybe we'll just have to post a guard and have the others sleep in each other's dreams." He is typing notes into his laptop furiously. He looks up, and says directly to his brother. "We need every one of us to stay strong for the others. No saying yes behind everyone's back – you got that Dean?"

"Yeah, Sammy, I got that. _You_ get that? Because if I'm remembering correctly, it wasn't me who said yes." Dean's voice has an edge to it, but that makes Sam secretly happy. He needs Dean to_ fight_. They all need Dean to fight.

Bobby gives a big yawn. "Well, we also need sleep 'cause we ain't any good to anyone without it."

Sam catches Cas's eye. Cas gives him a small smile and a grateful nod.

"Mind if I crash on the other bed in your room, Bobby?" Sam asks, and Dean rolls his eyes at the lack of subtlety. "I think Cas wants to talk to Dean."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

_Soldier boy, made of clay_

_Now an empty shell_

_Twenty one, only son_

_But he served us well_

_Bred to kill, not to care_

_Just do as we say_

_Finished here, Greeting Death_

_He's yours to take away_

"Disposable Heroes" by Metallica

…

Twisting her hands in her lap, Amelia Novak wonders how many times she will have to recount this tale. First, to the bored looking police officer that had dutifully taken the report twenty four hours after Claire's disappearance: to him, it was just another juvenile delinquent running off from a crappy situation. Then, to a detective who had made her feel as if she was suspect, some instinct of his active enough to gather that Amelia wasn't telling the whole truth of her worries. That the demons had come again, that the monsters were hunting them. . .

That fear she gave to the Winchesters.

And now she was on her fourth round of explanations. The FBI had become involved, and from the faint smirk she saw out of the corner of her eyes on the lips of the woman of the pair of them, she had worried they weren't taking it seriously either. But the man sat before her, asking her permission before moving a laundry basket from one of the chairs, as if it wasn't an embarrassing matter, but simply a courtesy. As if she was afraid someone was going to dig through her underwear while her daughter was missing. Sitting across from her, he'd taken notes, made interested sounds, and then gotten to why they were really there.

"Do you think your husband may have had something to do with her disappearance?"

The question left Amelia winded, shocked, pained. As if to make matters worse, the female agent plucked the one picture of Jimmy left anywhere in the house off of the crowded back table, a picture she couldn't give up, and yet buried behind others because she couldn't bear to look at it.

"My husband is dead. . ." Amelia begins, because the insurance had paid out and long ago been used up, a paltry little thing for a man who'd sold AM radio ads. He had been declared dead, and as far as the world was concerned Jimmy had never shown back up. . .

"We're not here from the insurance agency, Ms. Novak." The woman practically oozes, and from the chair the man shoots her a warning look, folding his notebook away and tucking it into his jacket pocket, with barely anything noted on it. "We know good ol' Jimmy has been spotted worldwide. . . quite the terrorist you married."

_Terrorist? _Amelia doesn't seem to realize she said it aloud, until the male agent looks back at her, folding his arms across his chest, brown eyes belying every bit of sympathy he'd offered at the start. "It's true that your husband has been described and photographed worldwide at events of . . . evangelical terrorism. Hundreds died, and he's managed to elude capture so far."

The female agent seems amused again, as she pulled a file from the case on her shoulder, flipping it open before handing it to Amelia, and within it is. . . carnage. White supermecists. Supposed Christian Value groups. Church leaders. Dictators. "We have cause to suspect, though, that he is in town and in the company of his accomplice. . ." Dean Winchester smirks at her from a mugshot, looking several years younger than the man who had been in her living room, looking over her life as if he was superior to her, with his nomadic life and lack of job. And a rapsheet, including murder in St. Louis that would horrify her sweet, faithful Jimmy.

A man that should have never been around an Angel of the Lord.

The woman smirks again, as Amelia looks at the pictures before her in horror, in fascination, in terror, and glancing at her partner she tips her head towards the door, the damage done, and damn she loves this part, that little seed of doubt, the unwitting idiots who made the game as fun as it was easy.

"You keep that, Ms. Novak. So you know who you're dealing with. Don't become an accomplice." Meg Masters practically purrs, her hand resting on the elbow of her favorite new catspaw as Ruben Rivera rises to his feet again.

"We'll be in touch."

**. . .**

The moment Castiel closes the door behind Sam, leans a shoulder against the wall, and without looking at Dean rumbles "We need to talk." Dean has to question whether he chose the phrase on purpose or not. Their last heart-to-heart had started that way, and Cas had nearly had a panic attack, because Dean apparently hadn't been closely monitoring his late-night television watching well enough to keep him off of chick flicks ("it was on.") that made that phrase the most dreaded utterance in the history of fictional relationships.

So, either it was a talk, or it was a talk, and considering how things went last time he clears his throat and watches the angel expectantly, one eyebrow raised. "Okay, so talk. And find a new line."

He is reassured when Cas snorts quietly, apparently remembering the same situation. "I will work on that. Demanding that I talk undermines the concept that we should talk, however."

Dean drains the bitter dregs of his coffee, staring at the bottom of it and frowning. Down to business, then. "I'm still not backing down from protecting you."

"There's protecting me, and then there's guarding me. We protect each other. If you persist in attempting to guard me, we are going to continue having fights like this one and like Chitaqua." Castiel's voice is level, even, and he makes his way to Dean, perching uncomfortably on the arm of the couch, his feet on the empty cushion beside Dean's, arms resting on his knees. It puts him above Dean, where he has to look up at Cas, and maybe it's instinct and maybe Dean's just as much of a pain in the ass, but he shifts up out of his seat and mimics Cas on the other arm, as if they both have to be uncomfortable to make the conversation work, and because it puts Dean back at eye level, their knees nearly touching, feet bracketing each other's.

"We needed you to go with Bobby anyway, and we needed to talk to Amelia. . ." Castiel makes a cutting gesture with his hand, shaking his head, and Dean rankles at the interruption.

"Yes. I understand that. Which is not the point. You could have achieved the same outcome by telling me as much, rather than insult my intelligence by pretending it wasn't angelic activity, and assuming that I would have insisted on going. It was not about the tactical issues. It was about 'protecting' me from the potential emotional backlash of having failed to protect the Novaks. You are treating me as psychologically unstable."

"Do I really gotta answer that?" Dean mutters, watching Castiel flatly.

"Just tonight you were considering giving yourself up as a vessel to Michael, which would doubtless be the end of you, and quite possibly the world." Castiel counters, and Dean scowls sullenly. They didn't have proof that was what he was thinking. . . and he wasn't going to take that as an adequate comparison when Cas had apparently been doing the self-loathing thing for their entire relationship now.

It's a beat before Castiel sighs, dropping his chin, and his shoulders sloop again. "You also do not need to remind me of what I am, Dean. I am aware that I am 'not an angel.' I am never unaware of what I was and what I am not. I have had. . . difficulties adjusting. But I am trying." And, seemingly connected only in ways that Castiel would understand, he continues in the same breath. "You never have to sleep on the couch, Dean."

". . . You're seriously going into a tangent now?" God help him, he was the boyfriend that wanted to talk about their feelings now.

"This is a very uncomfortable couch." Castiel remarks reasonably, as if it made perfect sense in that context. Dean can't help but laugh, and Castiel catches him by his shirt collar and kisses him, kneeling on the cushion of the couch between his feet, head tipped back, and shit. . _. Cas_ was the boyfriend who wanted to have sex instead of talking about his feelings.

It's strange day when screwing his boyfriend is the least 'gay' option in front of Dean. "This isn't over yet." He growls against Castiel's lips, already reaching to catch the hem of Cas's shirt, pulling it up until he's contorting his arms to try and pull them free without moving away, the fabric eventually breaking their kiss long enough to get it out of the way.

"No, it is not over." Cas agrees, working to strip off Dean's shirt, running his hand over his back muscles and onto Dean's broad shoulders, pulling him in closer so they are connected from lips to knees. Dean, sighs, wants to give in, lean into his angel and stop thinking, but he knows they can't, not yet. He sighs again, thinking he really is turning into a girl. Dean turns his head, but Cas just starts trailing little nips and kisses along his jaw and down his jugular, sucking gently at the base of his neck. One hand trailing fingernails along his spine, the other teasing gently on the back waistband of Dean's jeans.

It takes a moment, and a lot of will power, for Dean to clear his throat and push back from the dark haired man's embrace. "We can't just eliminate options, Cas. Not without a good reason." His voice comes out deep and a little breathless. He almost forgets his resolve when he feels Cas's hand inside his jeans massaging one buttock, wonders when his lover had managed to unfasten his pants. He feels Cas huff a warm exhale on his collarbone as the fallen angel maneuvers him into a reclined position.

Pulling himself into sitting on his heels, Cas glares down at Dean. "I'm not finished talking. I just want you to be quiet and listen. We cannot keep having this conversation because you don't know your own worth, Dean. You. Cannot. Say. Yes." Cas has used the change of position to finish tugging off Dean's clothes. He is kneeling between his lover's knees admiring his lean muscular body, the warm skin honey-toned. Cas keeps a determined glint in his blue eyes.

"C'mon, Cas. Think like the commander. You, Bobby, Sammy. You three have tons of knowledge and intelligence. You're all smarter than me. You're all good fighters. I'm just….ouch! Damnit, Cas! You bit me." Dean grabs Cas's hair as his head moves up until they are face-to-face again. Cas glares at him.

"Shut up, Dean." It's an angry growl, and Cas's face is furiously serious. "This is what I'm talking about. Your dangerous lack of self-esteem. Listen to me; Sam, Bobby, and I will fall apart without you. You are the glue that keeps our little band together. You are the heart that beats to keep us alive. You are my compass – my lodestone to point to the direction of righteousness. Without you, I 'fuck up monumentally'. So does Sam. Bobby stops caring. Don't you ever forget that. Without you, there is no _us_."

Dean inhales, trying to think how to answer that, his chest constricting with feelings, but Cas doesn't give him a chance to reply. He captures his mouth, not gentle as he steals any chance of an argument with his urgency, chases away Dean's reply with strong, capable hands and mouth.

The couch is no more comfortable with two occupants laying on it.

**. . .**

The knock on the door catches them as Dean packs duffels, pausing to idly towel his hair dry before looking to the door and rolling his eyes that Sam had bolted fast enough to forget his room key. . . again.

Amelia Novak's hollow, stony stare is an accusation as she flicks her gaze from Dean's shocked look, to Castiel as he walks out of the bathroom in jeans and pulling on a shirt, his hair a tousled disarray from toweling it dry that put the just-landed look of his angel days to shame. For a split second, Dean is oddly grateful that with Sam having crashed there earlier, both beds are mussed, but Amelia is not fooled; two rumpled beds or not the men's lips are swollen with kisses, a bite mark blossoms purple and red on Castiel's shoulder, and the smell of sex hangs in the air.

"_This_ is what you are doing instead of finding our daughter? With _him? _So you're gay now, and you stopped. . . stopped _caring?_" Amelia's first words to Cas are an accusation, and Dean winces as Cas withdrawals in on himself, face impassive, body still. Amelia's anger is directed at both the men.

"I am not Claire's father. I am not your husband." Castiel says evenly, and it twists something in him unexpectedly. His first words in this vessel, his first words with a human mouth, were this same sentiment with the same tactless bluntness, and the same devastating impact.

A lack of finesse that led them to this day, to Claire Novak's face with Asmodeus's sweet poison rolling from her lips.

"What _happened _to you?" Amelia asks, with a look that crosses horror and revulsion.

Dean shoots him a quick look, trying to convey something he misses (their silent communication only seemed to fail when Castiel most could use the instruction) and then ushers Amelia to a chair at the table, offering her a bottle of water from the room refrigerator. Cas sits across from her, studying her unabashedly as she stares riveted at him, as Dean continues his nervous movements, making coffee now in the two-cup motel pot, throwing towels in the bathroom, tossing toiletries into their bag. "You don't even _look_ like him anymore." She chokes out, and it sounds mournful and strangely terrified. A widow, staring at the breathing corpse of her husband.

There's some truth to it, Dean has to admit, though he wishes she hadn't caught Cas pulling his clothes on and witnessed most of it. Tattooed and scarred chest, with the lean muscles of a hunter instead of Jimmy Novak's slight, runner's physique gone a bit soft in sedentary life. Faded jeans and a hand-me-down henley, instead of Jimmy's churchgoing suit. A few more creases at the corners of his eyes.

"I am not Jimmy Novak," Cas reinforces, voice low and somber. "Nor am I the angel Castiel any longer. I will, however, help you locate Claire – if I can. But Amelia, Claire has accepted another angel as a vessel. I cannot guarantee you your desired outcome."

As Cas starts talking to Amelia, Dean slips out of the room, away from the awkward conversation, and knocks two doors down where Bobby and Sam are staying. Sam takes in Dean's face, and starts looking for weapons. "What's wrong? Where's Cas?"

"Amelia is in our room, with Cas." Dean's throat feels so tight he isn't sure how words are getting through, but he is managing, barely. "Where's Bobby?"

"He stepped out to get breakfast." Sam tells Dean to hang on while he finishes packing, offering that they can all go back to the room together as if one widow and dismayed mother is worse than all of the monsters they face on a daily basis. In a lot of ways. . . that's pretty true. "You think Cas'll be okay that long?" Dean nods, still looking lost, and his brother shakes his head. "You okay, Dean? You and Cas okay? Cas talk to you?"

Dean nods, looking up at Sam, but he speaks to what's on his mind rather than the question his brother puts to him. "I never, you know, had to worry about the husband-wife thing before, Sam. She's so angry." Sam takes in his brother's appearance, sock-clad feet to rumpled, un-styled hair, green eyes too wide open and face pale enough for the freckles to stand out. All together, Dean looks about 15, and incredibly vulnerable to be his big, brash brother.

"Cas isn't her husband, Dean, he never was. Jimmy was, and you know that Jimmy's dead." Sam is brushing this problem away, more worried about his brother's martyr complex. "I need to know that you guys got things straightened out, Dean. That you're not going to do anything stupid; let Michael wear you to the prom. Dean?"

Dean is still standing by the room's door. He sighs, "Yeah, Sammy, Cas talked to me about that." Sam motions for him to continue. "He says …." The rest is muttered so low that Sam can't hear it from where he is packing.

"What? What did he say Dean?" Sam strides the few steps until he is right in front of Dean again, and after a moment he glares at him. "Repeat what you just said, but this time stop muttering and speak up." He impatiently raps Dean's chin with his knuckle to lift his head up for eye contact. Whether he means to or not, Sam is behaving exactly like John Winchester, and Dean realizes it even as he practically snaps to attention in a learned response.

"I promised not to say yes." Dean tilts his head up and glares back, realizing again that life has been extremely unfair by allowing his little brother grow into a frikkin' giant.

Sam crosses his arms in front of him. "And?"

"And what?"

"Did he tell you why?" Sam feels like he is actually pulling teeth.

Dean rolls his eyes, and he throws in finger-quotes to underscore the ridiculousness of this entire situation. "He said I'm the 'glue.'"

"The glue?" Sam is unrelenting. He plans to stand here, and keep his brother here, until he understands the entire situation.

Deans face grows red. "The glue holding this group together," he grounds out averting his eyes from his brother's which also means he has no advance warning before his arms are pinned and he is engulfed in a hug from his ginormous baby brother. "Oh, god, no. Sam, leggo of me." Dean is struggling again, but Sam won't let go. "Sammy, no chick flick stuff." Dean's voice is muffled by being pressed into his brother's chest.

Sam laughs. "Shut up, Dean. I need this right now. Lucifer scared me half to death." Sam keeps hugging. Rests his cheek on the top of his brother's head, as if _determined_ to remind Dean that it's an important handful of inches he's grown. "The glue. That's good. Yeah, I fall apart without you."

"I interrupting you two idgits?" Bobby asks from the doorway.

"Help, Bobby, he's smothering me," Dean yelps, and his brother gives him one more squeeze then lets him go.

"Sorry." Sam's grinning at Dean not looking the least bit sorry. "I really was scared, though."

Dean shakes his head. "When has that ever stopped you? I remember when we were kids, you would awe me with how you were always ready to do what you thought was right, no matter how scared you were. I'd be quaking in my boots and you would stand right up to anyone, Dad, even. Man, Sammy, you've always been so brave."

"Yeah, well, you raised me right." Sam's not arguing, but he remembers Dean as being the really brave one. Realizes his brother has just made everything all better, again. Even though he's close to thirty now. Sam moves like he's going to hug Dean again, but Dean is prepared this time and stays out of arms' range.

Bobby clears his throat. "Would you ladies like the room longer?" He sets the bag of sausage biscuits on the table, careful to wipe his eyes before turning back around. "So I gather we're all good? On the same not-giving-up page?"

With Dean's urging the three hunters enter the room with Amelia and Cas, where they still sit: Castiel stiff and unmoving, and Amelia with her face buried in her hands. Bobby hands out the biscuits, sets the rest on the table, and introduces himself to Amelia. Then he asks Cas to bring them all up to speed.

"Amelia says that Jimmy's uncle, his father's brother, has called asking to meet with her today. Mark Novak," he adds, "from the list."

"Balls," Bobby growls. "You all will have to cover that. I'm scheduled to hook up with a few contacts for the crap on your 'shopping list.' They're meeting me halfway, and I can't have you lot with me."

Letting her breath out slowly, Amelia Novak raises her head again, eyes fixed somewhere between all of them, and indicates Dean without looking at him. "He's not welcome. I just. . . I can't be near him. It's too much."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

_Out on the street I'm stalking the night_

_I can hear my heavy breathing_

_Paid for the kill but it doesn't seem right_

_Something there I can't believe in._

_Voices are calling from inside my head_

_I can hear them I can hear them_

_Vanishing memories of things that were said_

_They can't try to hurt me now_

"Shot In The Dark" - Ozzy Osborne

Something just plain doesn't feel right about Sam and Cas going off without him, but Dean doesn't know if that's because he just got made to feel like some pretty boy that broke up Amelia's happy home, or what. Dean paces around his hotel room, fuming about the lack of fairness as he runs his hands distractedly through his dark blond hair. Why should he even care what Amelia thinks? Jimmy's been gone a long time, and it wasn't Dean's fault. He snorts, he was never even _attracted_ to Jimmy Novak, AM radio ad space salesman, same body as Cas or not. Hell, when Cas vacated the premises, he was the one lobbying to get Jimmy home to his family.

_Must have something to do with that 'profound bond.'_

After a while of wearing a path into the cheap tan carpet, Dean hefts his and Cas's duffels and walks the few steps down to Bobby's room, opening it with the key they'd left him. He needed to feel like he was doing _something_ constructive. Bobby has several books out in various stages of research, and Sam's laptop is set up on the table. Bobby's out picking up ingredients for protection spells, some dream root, and who knows what else. He said Dean couldn't come because he was persona non grata with most of the hunting community anymore, just like Sam. If he can't be with Bobby, or in on whatever his brother and his, still not easy to say even in his own head … boyfriend … are going to do, at least he can make himself useful and do some research.

But even situated in Bobby's room, Dean can't seem to quiet his nerves. Intuition and. . . something else. . . keep niggling at him, ruining his concentration, and he scratches blunt nails across the back of his neck, scowling.

It doesn't take much more incentive than some shuffling noises in the hallway to distract Dean from his research. He walks over and peers through the peep hole in the door. In the hall are several members of what must be the St. Louis SWAT team. He pulls his head back, heart beating fast. Leans against the door with his ear pressed on it. The sounds of a door being closed and all clear signals come next.

He knows the voice that rings out next, flat and syrupy. "He could just be out getting something to eat," Meg says, with just enough bite to almost sound official, rather than bitchy. "Leave a couple of your men posted in case he comes back. You don't want to give that killer a chance to escape again. Plus, if his brother is with him, he's wanted in connection with several murders, and there's that dark-haired terrorist with them too."

Peeking through the eye hole again Dean can see Meg holding a police radio, some type of badge around her neck. Seems to him that Meg is trying a new trick, turning them over to the authorities to either get them out of the way or ensure they can't set up defenses. He shudders at the thought of being dream walked by Michael while incarcerated. Dean wonders how she came up with the idea, and the knowledge that he's wanted for a murder in St. Louis, thanks to a shapeshifter. His answer comes from the next voice, and Dean stiffens, adrenaline making his heart race, clenching his fists for a fight he'd been long denied.

"Well, they can't have gotten too far, but I knew I didn't see the car," Ruben Rivera adds. _Fucking sonofabitch Rivera, just outside the door but I can't do a damn thing about him_. _Smug bastard's working with a demon now. Figures. Probably isn't even possessed, just rotten to the core._ Dean's thoughts are like a tidal wave, making him miss what gets said next.

Dean doesn't remember much about the ass kicking he got at Rivera's hands less than three months ago. He'd been injured already after fighting those bat things in San Antonio and was running a temperature of 104 at the time. He'd love a more fair fight, but knows there wouldn't be any such thing if he opened the door right then.

Dean sneaks into the bathroom with his cell phone. He calls Bobby first, makes a brief report and gets told to keep his head down like he's still some kind of kid who needs the advice. Then he calls Cas, knowing Sam will be driving. He needs to let them know to hide the car and to arrange somewhere else for them to meet up. He starts rooting through the bag for some way to disguise himself.

_**. . . .**_

"_She's got eyes of the bluest skies, As if they thought of rain, I'd hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain" _the Guns and Roses lyrics ring out from Cas's cell, making Sam smile. He had caught his brother singing along with the song one day and accused him of thinking of Cas, enjoying the blush that crept over Dean's face. Then Sam programed it as the ringtone for whenever Dean called Cas, as a practical joke, but so far it's just triggered and waiting on the phone of an angel who wouldn't think to change it (or know how if he did). Sam thinks he needs to steal Dean's phone and call Cas when they are all together sometime soon. It's no fun being the only one in on the joke.

Sam stops smiling when he sees the sour look on Amelia's face as Cas answers the call. He had been less than pleased with being forced to separate, and his stony silence and scowl have made it clear to everyone in the car with him. "Hello, Dean." Cas is sitting shotgun, half turned toward Sam who watches Cas's face go from somewhat defiant to concerned; he remembers a time when Castiel's only three expressions seemed to be stoic, earnest, or confused. Sam tenses as Castiel's eyes slide to Amelia, and his more human tension bleeds into angelic stillness again. "So you, me, Sam, the car? I see. Yes, I imagine Amelia might know more. Yes, we are just pulling in to the university's library. Traffic was terrible. Of course, Dean. Don't worry about us. Yes. Yes. And Dean?" Cas sounds determined; he does nothing to lower his voice and shows no shame or hesitation, "I love you."

As Cas snaps the old cell phone closed, Sam waits expectantly. Cas, however, shoots a glance at Amelia and gives a short head shake at Sam's expectant look. Cas's first words have Sam moving to comply. "Take your battery out of your phone."

"How did you find us today?" Castiel's words as he turns to Amelia are a low rumble that was as far from Jimmy Novak as his vocal chords could produce. No one had even thought about it, but Amelia showed up at their room door, in a hotel where they were using aliases. How did she know where they were? Sam pushes back his hair as his mind starts running through various scenarios, each worse than the one before. He gets out of the car.

"Did they arrest your boyfriend?" Amelia's words are strangely flat, formless, but her eyes flash inhate as she raises her chin and watches Castiel, even while Sam pulls her door open. "She _remembers_ you. She remembers pieces of that night, still. And Jimmy. . . he _told_ me. He knew, he knew so much more than you meant him to. How long did you let my husband watch while _you_ rotted him away? While you _murdered _people, and. . . and. . ."

She's in tears, now, sobbing out her accusations, and her horror. Jimmy Novak had been a peaceful, gentle man. He had wanted so little in life, he had _believed_, and Castiel had used his faith and his face to commit _atrocities_. He had done far more than simply broken her home: he had broken _all _of them.

Cas recoils from her physically, blue eyes wide, and it was only ever the emotional blows that staggered him so completely. Sam doesn't wait for her to finish: he hauls her out, one hand holding her upper arm just a little bit higher than to allow for her to stand comfortably.

Hazel eyes glinting and fury setting his jaw, the younger Winchester gives her a little shake. "What _exactly_ have you done? And who told you where to find us?"

"We did." The younger Winchester never has a chance to finish drawing his gun. The deep, bass voice seems to come from nowhere, and the force that drives him to his knees sends the weapon falling, skidding across the parking lot to come to a stop at the polished black shoes of a man in his mid-60s, silver haired and slender formed, his clerical collar a pristine white and suit neatly pressed, and vibrant blue Novak eyes watch Sam with no warmth.

"Mark. . ." Amelia breathes, turning to him as she dashes her suddenly free hand across her eyes, but before she's finished moving a familiar face has interposed itself in her vision, close enough to nearly brush toes to hers, and Asmodeus doesn't wait for Amelia to finish breathing her daughter's name before she brushes fingertips against the woman's forehead, sending her crumpling to the ground.

"Sleep. Your task is done."

Castiel doesn't have time to clear the car, before a hand closes around his arm like a vice-grip, digging the hilt of his sword painfully into his forearm and trapping it there before he can raise it, and for not the first time he feels _precisely_ what he gave up to be human, how very small it makes him in comparison, as he is twisted, contorted, muscles protesting, to stare up into Ba'el's eyes as he's easily held at bay. "No, Castiel. We are done playing with you."

Claire's snow boots are all Sam can see, as Asmodeus leans down and gently draws her fingers across his temple, stealing away his consciousness, before looking up at her brothers. Her expression is apologetic, gentle, and sad, as she takes Sam's wrist in both of her delicate hands, preparing to whisk them away.

"You should have listened, little brother." Her voice is the last thing Castiel hears, before the ground is wrenched away beneath him.

…

Sam Winchester wakes up gagging on blood, a sharp pain twanging his neck and shoulders as he attempts to wrench away from the source, retching uselessly. He can already feel it coating his throat, feel the familiar hum of it entering his system. The abatement of a hunger he didn't even realize he could _feel_ any more, combined with a sickening sense of dread and shame.

The fingers that clench around his jaw, forcing him back into place, squeeze tight enough to make his jaw creak, threatening to break the bones.

"The vessel _will_ be prepared." Ba'el's voice growls angrily, and Sam drums his heels against the stone floor, attempting uselessly to pull free from the angel bearing down on him, the metal of the chalice clinks against his teeth and sends vibrations into his aching skull. "No. Lucifer paid for his kindness with you, Sam Winchester. You_ will_ submit, and you _will_ be prepared to receive him."

The angel looks mottled and half-mad in the multifaceted light that splashes across his sharp features. As Sam bucks in his grip, hands beating uselessly at the angel's arms, the harsh thud of his head being driven back into the floor, driving consciousness away again, would be a relief.

Except that his dreams were no longer a guaranteed escape.

Sam's hand falls, lax, to rest against the still-cooling corpse of the demon beside him.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

_Sleep my friend and you will see_

_That dream is my reality_

_They keep me locked up in this cage_

_Can't they see it's why my brain says rage._

"Welcome Home" by Metallica

Opting for one of Sam's douchey stocking caps to hide his hair, Cas's sunglasses to hide his green eyes, clean shaven as a baby and slouchingly wearing Sam's jeans and hoodie to give the appearance of being smaller, Dean leaves the hotel to meet Bobby in the parking garage. He slings their duffels and computer cases into the back seat of Bobby's truck and clambers in front.

"Not a word," Dean grouches at Bobby, who is smirking at him. "It's a disguise and it worked."

Bobby snorts, half-laugh, half agreement. He's glad the kid used his head. He pulls away from the hotel, heads for an abandoned house in a deserted park of town. The city of St Louis has too many of those right now, more than 6,000 derelict buildings in this city that was once the fourth largest in the United States but has seen a seventy percent decline in population.

"It was Meg and Rivera, working together." Dean says this in way of explanation for his foul mood. "If I'd have been in my room, if we had checked in together, I'd be sitting in jail waiting for you to spring me somehow. Damn, Bobby, if Amelia hadn't thrown me for a loop, I woulda figured something was wrong. I told Sam to take the battery out of his cell – that's the number she had, he gave it to her when we stopped for Q&A, but now Cas ain't answering."

"Cool your jets, Boy. We'll find them. Get'em navigated here to our new home away from home. Figure out what's going on. No sense takin' on 'til we know what we're dealing with," Bobby's gruff voice helps settle Dean. He has been allowing his thoughts to jump around all day, while he couldn't reach Cas or Sam and he waited for Bobby's return.

Just as the sun sets, Bobby pulls up to the backdoor of a two-story red brick house he had located earlier. He gets out and closes the fence, allowing the bushes and weeds that were being held back to spring up and conceal most of the truck. As they enter and secure the door behind them, they agree on tasks to make the place secure, physically locking things up, laying down salt lines, and writing angel and demon sigils on the walls.

Dean sets up the computers, too, using the Smart phone tethering that Sam set up because he can't handle being without the internet for two minutes, but Dean's glad his geeky brother was so insistent that it needed to work with his backup phones too. He sneaks into the basement and Gerry-rigs electricity for them too, so computer use and phones can be repowered. Dean also rolls out the camping gear from Bobby's truck, sleeping bags, a camp table and stove, food supplies, a cooler, a couple chairs.

It's all stalling tactics. Every moment that drags on makes it absolutely clear that something has happened to Sam and Cas. Lucifer's vessel and the guy holding the metaphorical key to the cage. . . 'something' was just Dean's way of not wanting to admit to himself that he knew what was going on.

They'd been snatched, and he'd been the idiot too caught up in his guilt about the whole Jimmy/Cas/Amelia thing not to see it coming a mile away.

Given the materials Bobby dug up, the rest of the plan just falls into place. Dean can't just sit back and pretend he can focus to research in order to find them. Not when he has a way to reach out to them right in front of him.

As soon as they get settled, Dean digs out Sam's brush, teasing out some of his brother's hair to use in the African Dreamroot Tea, for that final guiding ingredient. He doesn't allow himself a moment to dwell on the fact that, with Sam and Cas both missing, he reaches out for his little brother first. Cas was the love of his life, but he's been taking care of Sam his _entire_ life. And they _still_ didn't know how and why Lucifer had been able to get that much control over Sam in his dream. "You watch over me, okay? Don't let me stay in there too long. . . something happens, you get a call or narrow it down, whatever, you wake me up. You got it?" He's lecturing Bobby, who is watching him with some mixture of sympathy and worry and downright exasperation at being ordered around by Dean.

"This is a _bad_ idea, Dean." Bobby rumbles, but Dean continues throwing ingredients into the mix, ignoring him.

"It's the only idea we've got for now. Keep looking."

The tea tastes like crap, and Sam's too-long frikkin' hair catches in his throat, but he's unconscious before he has time to complain about it.

**. . .**

Sam is sitting on the hood of the Impala parked in Stull Cemetery, Mumford and Sons "Broken Crown" playing on the sound system, when Dean walks up to join him. Not wanting his brother to kill him in the dream, Dean calls out to him before getting very close. Sam turns, and Dean sees blood smeared on his face and dripping from his mouth.

"Don't, Dean, don't look at me," Sam turns away from his brother trying to curl into himself. "Go away, get out of my head." This is a broken Sam, anguished and self-loathing.

Dean advances slowly, reaching for his brother, unsure of what this might mean in his sleeping brother's head, needing to make contact to be able to find him in the physical world. He takes a deep breath and pulls his little brother into a one-armed embrace. Even as he does it, he can see the dream version of Sam shift into his brother at about 13, smaller, thinner, shaggy hair hiding his eyes.

"Sammy, hey dude, it's me. I'm here with you. It'll be okay." This dream, now, is just one night of many spent watching the stars together on the hood of the car that has been their home and refuge for so long. The music stops.

From the darkness outside the charmed circle of the brothers' home, Dean hears a snort. "You still see me as a little kid, don't you?" Sam, grown up Sam, asks. "Ya know, somewhere inside he's still that kid, the one who hero-worshipped you." The version that strolls up to tower over Dean, who is now perched alone on the car, may be even bigger than Sam actually is. More aggressive too, even standing still he resonates action and violence. More like Soulless Sam.

This one, Dean knows, will be able to report what's going on dispassionately. He is a soldier. "I need to know where they are holding you, physically. And I want to know what they are doing to my brother."

"Dean, I am your brother." Sam snorts. "Kind of a Star Wars moment there. But I am you know … your brother. I'm just separated from the part that can't cope with the fact that they are forcing demon blood down my throat." Dean closes his eyes, holding back the pain those words bring. Sam fought that addiction for so long. The older Winchester sets that aside, a problem for another day.

"'Kay, other than that, how's he, uh, you, doing physically? Can you tell me anything about what happened? Where you are?"

When Dean reopens his eyes, it's daylight. He is standing at the open driver's side door of the Impala and "Rock of Ages" is blaring from the stereo. This is the day Sam defeated Lucifer and threw the devil and an Archangel into the cage in Hell. "Did I ever tell you how much you helped that day?" Sam asks. "How you hanging onto my arm and refusing to let me die alone – how this car with all its memories – helped me be strong?"

The constantly changing scenery is making Dean feel queasy. "Hey, Sam, man … I don't know how long I'll be here. I appreciate the trip down memory lane, but you're the psychic here. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to dream walk. Can you answer my questions first? Then you can take me wherever in your head you wanta go. Okay?"

They are sitting in the car now; Dean driving along some nameless road in the middle of who knows where with his brother sitting in the passenger seat, staring at him. This is his Sam, brow furrowed with worry. "Dean, I saw stained glass, broken windows, Catholic iconography. I don't know where exactly, but I heard Meg earlier. We're probably still in St. Louis. The car … it's parked near the library on the University of Saint Louis campus. I'm pretty sure they brought Cas here too. Angel air." Sam looks like he is struggling to stay lucid.

"Dean, be careful. They are prepping my body to be Lucifer's vessel." Then he and Sam are standing on the side of a road in the dark watching a semi plow into the side of the Impala. "They know something is going on. They're angels, Dean, they dream walk better than me. If one gets too close, I'm throwing you, you hear me. You've got to stay safe to help me."

The scene shifts again. They are in a remarkably bland hotel room. Dean is being held in the viselike grip of his brother – who he knows isn't really as much bigger than he is as he currently appears in Sam's dream. This is the hug from earlier today. "Thanks, Dean, I needed that. Lucifer really scared me…" he's saying, like earlier.

This time, Dean returns the embrace. "You hold on baby brother. Keep saying no. I'm looking for you, and I'll find you." He grips as tightly as he can. "I'll always find you."

Dean catches the sound of movement behind them.

"Isn't that sweet. You know, I think. . ." Dean doesn't get the chance to hear what Lucifer thinks, as the devil himself appears before them, lounging on the memory of that motel bed, smirking at Dean and Sam. With a shove from Sam, Dean off-balances.

**. . .**

"Shit!"

Dean doesn't so much wake up as he throws himself headlong into consciousness—or maybe Sam had done that for him. Dragging the back of his hand across his mouth, Dean rolls over, doubling in on himself on top of the sleeping bag Bobby had apparently hauled him onto, and his head is splitting, his stomach roiling, and Bobby's warm hand is on his shoulder.

A hand on his shoulder._ Cas_.

"Blue toothbrush. In the bags." Dean manages to gasp out, and Bobby (ever quick on the uptake) doesn't need to ask why.

"Damnit, boy, you're in no shape to go hopping into _another _brain right now." Bobby grouses, and he leverages Dean into sitting up on his own, making no attempt to go get anything from the bags, still crouching beside Dean.

"I gotta, Bobby. It's the Hells Angels. They got them. I need. . ." Raking a hand through his hair, Dean stares off at the far wall and the sigils scrawled across it. "How many empty churches?" Bobby stares at him as if he's off his gourd, so he repeats himself in a manner that sounds less crazy-person and more like a sane and lucid hunter. "Sammy thinks they're in a local abandoned Catholic church. How many?"

"Somewhere between two and three dozen, 'cross the whole city." Bobby frowns at him, tipping his ever-present cap back. "We can narrow it down by. . ."

"Bobby, I'm going in okay? I gotta know he's okay. Thirty minutes. . . an hour, tops. You're the better researcher, you don't need me pacing around behind you and it's gonna take that long either way. Just. . . _find_ them, okay?" Dean wanted to make sure there was still something there to find. He was going to do his damndest to make _sure_ there was still someone to find.

This had been fucking with Cas's head before it began. . . well, fucking with his head. He had to do _something_.

Stirring a crappy cup of tea with someone else's toothbrush wasn't going down as the weirdest thing he'd ever done, but he doubted Miss Manners was ever going to approve. This time, he sits himself down in the middle of the sleeping bag, aware of Bobby's worried stare, before lifting the cup in a sardonic toast.

"Slainte."

…

Dean doesn't even have time to feel relief that the fact that he _can_ slip into Cas's dreams means Cas is still _alive_. From the moment Dean enters Castiel's mind, it's clear he has stumbled into a battlefield.

The actual_ literal_ battlefield before him has little to do with the realization. Spread below Dean is Hell as he has never witnessed it from his own little corner, horrors and screams and blood and the flash of light and stench of sulfur undercut with the clean scent of ozone, and it was. . . everywhere, nowhere, below him and around him, pressing in on all sides, a feeling as much as it was a place.

Castiel was nowhere to be seen, and yet he was _everywhere_. Light spilled between the cracks and crevices of the landscape, burning, cauterizing, and seeking. Always seeking. This is Castiel's memories of forty years of hell, looking for a Righteous Man who was apparently destined to break before he could be found. The battle swells again, and before Castiel can take his true angelic form against the hoard of Hell, before they can test if Dean's eyes will be burned from their sockets like Pamela before him by the mere _memory_ of an angel's visage, he can suddenly feel Cas_. His_ Cas. Spinning in place, he tries to shut out the vertigo of seeing perdition this way, as an angel would, and feeling the stomach-churning _wrongness_ of Hell. He's looking for the source of that feeling of Cas, but there's nothing but Castiel's-the-angel's light. Just as that light takes wing and shape to throw himself into battle, Dean finds himself yanked through memories and deposited on a familiar cabin floor, his dream form landing ungracefully on his ass on the cold tile of a cabin in Whitefish, Montana, staring up at Cas staring down at another him as he slept.

"Cas. . .?"

It was even weirder watching Cas watch him sleep than it was to wake up to Cas staring at him from inches away. For _years._ This was weeks ago, just after Christmas, and Cas's face here was pinched thin in pain and withdrawal, but the naked adoration in his eyes was disconcerting.

But there was no presence, no _feeling_ of Castiel. Cas wasn't here the way he had been in the memory of Hell, right at the end, not really.

Dean wrenches his eyes away from the unguarded expression on Cas's face, shoves himself to his feet roughly and waves a hand in front of Cas's eyes to reassure himself that he's standing in frikkin' Memorex. It's a memory, like a standing in a perfect replica of that night. Nearly perfect. The lightning flashing through the hunter green curtain draws Dean's eyes, and he frowns to himself, edging forward warily to look out on a storm he doesn't remember.

He _really_ doesn't remember the cabin having a charming scenic view of Hell, right out the front windows. As he watches the scene shifts, reshapes into another memory, half-formed, but Hell still shines through the image of the two of them on a roadside after Dean's jaunt through time to the future, his hand on Cas's shoulder, a fondness and warmth on the angel's face.

_Don't ever change._

The imagery shifts, a direct counterpoint, and the underlay of Hell shines through insidiously: Dean sitting on a bed in a crappy motel room after his first jaunt to the past, Sam's unmussed bed beside him under the flat gaze of Castiel-the-angel, and Dean can hear the words this time as they ring through the dreamscape, dragged to the forefront by a malicious presence.

"_Destiny can't be changed, Dean. All roads lead to the same destination."_

And that's when Dean _gets_ it. This isn't random chance, isn't just the changeable dreamscape of a sleeping mind. The Hell's Angels were in Cas's head, rooting around in his memories, literally trying to drag him through Hell and closer to the secret of the Cage. . . and Castiel was fighting a losing battle for his own _mind_.

They were chipping away at Cas, trying to find that broken angel beneath who still had millions of years of 'destiny' and 'fate' crap hardwired into his head. They wanted their Apocalypse, and Cas could hand deliver it to them, now. All they needed was to break him again. Or to break past his mental defenses and into his memories of the Cage.

The memory dredged up outside of the cabin is unfamiliar, now - a churning, gray, desolate beach - and it gives Dean the chance to tear his eyes away from Hell. He bolts to the door of the cabin, twisting the handle to throw himself back out into the dreamscape. . . and nothing happens. The knob doesn't turn. The door doesn't swing open. There's no give at all, and as he turns to glare back at the image of Castiel sitting on the bed, stroking his hair and curled protectively around him, he hisses angrily under his breath.

"Damn it, Cas, let me _in." _

There's not even a _door_ when he turns back, just a flat, smooth, seamless stretch of wall. Stubborn bastard was using that same trick _again_. He should have known dreamwalking an angel, even a fallen one, was going to be more of a pain in the ass than popping into his brother's head. Cas had tucked him safely away in his psyche and was trying to bench him from the fight, to keep him safe.

Yeah, they were going to have words about pulling that kind of stunt on him, after their recent fights.

Cas wasn't the only one who could play with the dreamscape, though. Dean carefully pictures the front porch as he remembered it from Christmas and steps forward, not letting himself think of solid walls or how damned stupid he'd look walking right into one, and closes his eyes. When he opens them again he's standing on the porch-to-Hell.

"Walking through walls now. Take_ that_ Shadowcat."

Cas wouldn't understand that reference, either.

Of course, he didn't expect the space around him to shift into that first door-less room Castiel had made trap him, but. . . maybe he _should_ have. The first big choice, for Cas, and this time, he's standing a foot to his own left, watching himself duck his head down to force Castiel to look him in the eyes. Even then, he knew Cas's weakness. . . the same way Uriel had. The same way Zachariah had. Cas never had been subtle, and Dean knew how to read people. He should feel shame for exploiting that, but he can't now any more than he could then.

_Castiel? He has this little weakness. He _likes_ you. _The voice is too clear, and he wonders if he's merging his own thoughts and memories into this uncomfortable little blend of images, if he's bleeding his memories into Castiel's, in the same way they jumped from his thoughts of that door-less cabin wall into Heaven's Green Room again. To test the theory, he grits his teeth, looking at himself looking at Castiel, and _remembers._

His words are clear in Castiel's memory of this, and they resonate deep within his psyche, the way the declaration of fate had before, strengthened by Dean's will.

"_This is simple, Cas! No more crap about being a good soldier. There is a right and there is a wrong here, and you know it. Look at me! You _know_ it!"_

Dean doesn't have time to celebrate the victory of figuring out how to make himself a contender in Cas's fight, before the scene shifts and this time, immersed in it, he can feel the _wrongness_ of that pull. This is someone rifling through Castiel's memories like files in a cabinet, yanking out the ones they could weaponize, and Dean was being pulled along for the ride.

Dean lands face-first into a memory of fallen autumn leaves, the slow, methodical sound of raking apparent. Before he can do much more than register Castiel's shoes in front of his face, raise his head to follow the line of trench coat to the face above it, Hell breaks through the memory sharply, a clear surge forward for the insidious presence in Cas's head, and Dean finds himself right back in the cabin in Whitefish, looking up at his own sleeping face.

Except he doesn't look like _this_.

Funny how every freckle and eyelash could be in the right place, putting truth to Castiel's drunken claims to having memorized them, but everything could seem. . . _off_. Dean's pretty sure he's never been _beautiful_ before, but in Cas's memories. . .

Is this how Cas sees him?

It doesn't matter. He gets it. Cas is fighting this battle like an _angel_, meeting Asmodeus step for step, throwing up barriers to her access of his memories and thoughts of breaking into the Cage by summoning up every memory he can to keep her out of it, and out of anything else he considers private.

But it's more than that. Millions of years rattling around in Castiel's head, and it's only the last few years that Dean's getting glimpses of. Castiel's summoning up his memories of _why_ he's fighting. Of why he kept fighting of his own free will. It means something. It means she's still trying to turn Cas, still trying to drag him down to her level as she invades his mind and his privacy completely, twisting his thoughts back on themselves, trying to reintroduce doubt. And Cas. . .

Well, Cas is a bit busy trying to keep Dean safe in his head, apparently, by shoving him into a memory constructed into a saferoom.

"_I gave _everything_ for you! And this is what you give to me."_

Dean flinches. He knows the memory Cas is having thrown at him now, even without being in the middle of it. Dean doesn't want Cas remembering that alleyway, and he's not giving up _this_ time, even if Cas is trying to shove him in a box.

"Goddamnit you stubborn son of a bitch. I can _help_."

The answer that comes to him is Castiel's voice, but he's damn sure it's not Cas's doing, and he scowls up at a phantom ceiling.

"You can't, Dean. You're just a man. I'm an angel."

Frikkin' angel dicks. If they wanted to throw down. . . "I dunno. I've taken down some pretty big fish." He supplies the response, closing his eyes again. He needs Cas. He has no idea how long has passed in real-time, and he doesn't have time to play hide-n-seek in Cas's memories trying to get ahold of him. He pulls up the image again, the last time he felt his Cas, and this time he doesn't even try for the door: when he opens his eyes again, he's standing in Lisa Braeden's back yard, staring across his own raking figure at Castiel and he has. . .

He has absolutely no idea when this is. No, he has an idea, but he never saw Cas here. He went a year without seeing Cas, here.

Hell surges around him, like a ghost-image over the landscape, and despite knowing he doesn't really have a body here, Dean can almost swear the temperature has dropped thirty degrees since he landed in this memory. That's. . . that's seriously not-good.

That's cage stuff. Closer to Lucifer, not the pit Dean was found in. Castiel's focus is drifting.

And Crowley had never been in this yard. No. He couldn't have been. Dean would have known.

"Dean. Please don't watch this." The familiar voice is rough with pain from behind him, and Dean turns quickly to see the object of his search watching him pleadingly. Cas looks. . . exhausted didn't begin to cover it. The dream version of Cas, the present, flannel-wearing human Cas staring him in the eye rather than the Castiel being drawn off with the King of Hell, looks so haggard and pale that it's hard to think of him as anything other than corpse-like. He steps back as Dean steps forward, though, keeping him at arm's length. "Cas. . ."

"I can't keep you both out. I can't even keep her out."

Her. Asmodeus. Cas nods before Dean even has to voice it, but he's not looking at Dean, he's focusing on the landscape: whether it was the featureless hallways Crowley was now leading the memory-him down, or the Cage, Dean didn't know. "She's doing this on purpose. She knows you're here, and she's going to. . ."

But just to show you how serious I am about this scheme...How about I float you a little loan? Say, 50 large? 50,000 souls from the pit. You can take them up to heaven. Make quite a showing.

". . . divide us." Cas's jaw clenches. Around them, whether by Asmodeus's design or Castiel's failing concentration, the images shift rapidly. Castiel standing amidst carnage, eyes blazing with light. Castiel sitting alone in a room, staring at a jar of blood. Castiel, hand outstretched, wiping out hundreds of lives at a KKK meeting. Castiel. . .

"I'm showing him the truth, brother. He should know, don't you think?" Claire's quiet voice corrects him, and Dean startles, cursing sharply, and instinctively he and Cas move together, shoulders brushing, Cas's hand reaching out to twine fingers with his, and as Claire turns her head from the images to look at them both, they disappear.

The safe room of Whitefish is cracking around them, Hell bleeding through to the point where the Castiel and Dean on the bed aren't even distinguishable from the background, and Dean really doesn't want to know what that means for them. He doesn't have much time left, and Cas is staggering beside him. "I'm making this worse. You're paying too much attention to me. . . " Dean surmises, helping brace Cas upright, and the angel shakes his head slightly without looking up, winded by effort, eyes screwed closed, brow furrowed.

"No. You've helped, or I would have just pushed you out. I was losing me. They were getting the information anyway, Dean. We're not built for secrets. As much as I've tried. . ."

No. They weren't having a secrets and lies conversation now, not with everything going on around them. Pulling Cas closer, Dean folds himself around Castiel's slighter frame, holding him tightly as if he could lend Cas his strength. "Hold on, Cas. We're coming to get you. We are. Just. . . hold on."

Cas's hands rise to his cheeks, and he shifts to support himself and then kisses Dean roughly, unrestrained, teeth and bruising force, fingers tightening their grip in his hair painfully, and it's almost enough that Dean can't feel the room breaking around them. "I love you." Cas speaks into his mind, supported by the ringing echo of memories and push of his dreams.

Even before Dean wakes to Bobby's hand slapping across his cheek, he knows. . .

That was Cas saying goodbye.

"I got it. I know where they are." It's probably the most welcome words he's ever heard from Bobby Singer in his life.


	10. Chapter 10

_Fall onto your knees_

_For the Phantom Lord_

_Victims falling under chains_

_You hear them crying dying pains_

_The fists of terrors breaking through_

_Now there's nothing you can do_

_Hear the cry of War_

_Louder than before_

_With his sword in hand_

_to control the land_

"Phantom Lord" by Metallica

Castiel wakes to lips gently pressing to his forehead, and the crushing knowledge that he has failed. Jerking his head away as best he is able in his restraints, Castiel glares hollowly up at the familiar blue eyes that stare down at him, the pale oval face that smiles beatifically. He knows he should never be able to hate Claire Novak, but at this moment he wishes his hands were free, and all of his thoughts are violent.

"You had no right. . ."

"Brother, I had every right." Her words are a gentle correction, and he hates her for them. Hates her for tearing into his mind. Hates her for the show she had put on, the display she had made of it, just to get what she wanted. "You have been led far astray, Castiel. I understand that now. I understand you now."

"Don't do this, Asmodeus." Pulling against the straps that keep him secured upright in a straight-backed, heavy chair, Castiel tries one last time for reason. "You cannot believe that this is right. That this was our Father's plan. Humanity deserves to be. . ."

"Saved, Castiel?" One delicate hand cups his cheek and his skin crawls under her touch, he can taste bile, sharp and bitter, on his tongue at the pitying tone of her voice. "They are so far past that now. This is the only way to bring the world back to Father's plan, to His original design. This is fate, Castiel. It is destiny, and once you believed in it. You once believed as we do, though you were backing our other brother. I will free them both. It's the only way to please Him."

He has this, still. It is all he has, now. Raising his chin, tilting his head to take her hand from his skin, he fixes an unblinking, determined stare on her and breathes out his defiance in words that have never been his, until now. "You are nothing but a petulant child, Asmodeus. He gave us free will for a reason, and I will use mine to fight you, and Lucifer, and Michael, and Ba'el, and anyone other deluded fool who cannot see that destroying everything He loved will not win them back His favor. There is right and there is wrong. I know which side I am on, finally. To hell with destiny. And to hell with fate."

Asmodeus draws back from him, standing straight again, and the smile drains away. Regarding him flatly, imperiously, she inclines her head slightly: an opponent acknowledging the other across a field of battle. Her words fall cold from her lips, emotionless and flat. "And 'to hell' with me, now. To restore His plan, and free my brothers. Thank you, for giving us the information we needed."

It's only when she speaks to them that Castiel notices others in the room with them at all. "Watch him. We may need him yet."

And then she's gone, to retrace his footsteps into the Cage. Asmodeus disappears in a flutter of wings and a wash of tainted grace, abandoning him to a broken, desecrated church full of watching demons, and a ringing silence that is broken only moments later by Sam Winchester's gurgling scream that echoes in the abandoned space. Clenching his fingers on the edge of the armrest, Castiel flexes his arms slowly, carefully, eyes closing as he concentrates on the sound as a sign that his friend is alive and needs him, attempting to find some weakness in the ties binding him.

The light slap against his cheek that draws his eyes open again puts him face to face with Meg, grinning down at him. "This seems familiar, doesn't it? You can stop trying to wiggle out, it isn't going to work."

As he stares into the true face of the creature who tortured him to begin this again, he for a moment wonders if the pop of the light at the doorway is somehow inadvertently his doing, drawing on his fury. Sparks fly, spitting electricity, and Meg clearly has the same thought, stepping farther back into the room with a look of concern creasing her face. "What. . ."

When the first demon drops to his knees, smoke pouring from his mouth to burn in a circle around him, Castiel is nearly as surprised as she is. "Stop that!" she screeches.

As the second falls, Castiel begins laughing, harsh, humorless, half-mad, setting his body quaking in his bindings. "This isn't me. This is you. You're feeding Sam demon blood, aren't you?" He can't help the hysterical edge to his voice, though he wishes he could. "You're pouring power into one of the best hunters on the planet. Of course he's trying to force it out of him by killing every demon in his vicinity. It's who he is. How great do you think his range could become, Meg?" Two demons drop, in the center of the room, and Castiel bares his teeth at Meg in a feral smile as she edges away, towards the front door of the church. "Do you think you'll survive to see Lucifer walk the earth again? I suggest you run."

"I'm with the freak." The voice comes from behind him and Castiel freezes, his blood running cold, every muscle drawing taunt in his body, his laughter cutting short mid-breath. He watches the hated figure he knew from video step into sight, listens to the voice that had laid Dean bare, made him question. "Let's get out of here."

The church door slams shut again the moment Ruben Rivera and Meg wrench it open, and this time Castiel knows it is him. Blood spills over his chin, fire runs in his veins, and he stares fixedly on Rivera as Meg turns to look at him in shock. He shouldn't be able to do this. She knows it. Castiel knows it. His limitations were made quite clear in her little experiment. But the protective instinct that allowed him to tap into his remaining spark of grace, burn away the soul he'd shaped for himself, seemed not to care that the injury Rivera had dealt Dean was old, healed, little more than a memory.

The burden of a memory like Castiel's is that he can recall every hateful word. Every kick. Every punch. The way Dean's body seemed so lifeless on the film. How the hospital room smelled around them. How his hand was limp in Castiel's. Every flash of doubt in his eyes since San Antonio.

"You can't. . ." Meg begins, but even she seems to question that assertion, looking between Rivera and Castiel. She has no love for the human, no love for any human. He knows that she will run. And he knows eventually he will deal with her. His voice shakes with effort as he narrows his eyes, raises his chin, and growls out his response.

"Have you ever seen Star Wars, Meg?" Clawing as his throat, Ruben Rivera's eyes widen impossibly, his breath cutting short in a wheeze, his face reddening. This was never what Dean wanted from him, but he cannot stop it, cannot control the impulse, and he cannot make himself look away. Another light in the room pops, farther along now, and Meg looks half panicked. Sam is going to reach her soon.

Rivera drops to his knees, struggling to breathe, and Castiel clenches his hand in a fist, grinding his teeth together as he squeezes out the words he had heard on the screen of a motel room, Dean's head pillowed on his knee and Sam flopped down on the floor before them, sharing Chinese food between them.

"'I find your lack of faith disturbing.'"

Meg chooses the better part of valor, as he knew she would: she did not need a door to escape.

Ruben Rivera would never breathe again.

…

It stands as a memorial to lost faith. Abandoned, falling in on itself, towering over a mostly empty neighborhood. Dean thinks it's fitting that this church looks like a physical manifestation of his prayers, still there, but empty and not expecting answers anymore.

Once Bethlehem Lutheran was a beautiful building, a red brick Gothic wonder standing at the intersection of Salisbury and North Florrissant in North St Louis. It has been vacant long enough now to appear derelict even at a glance, damaged windows with stained glass like confetti on the ground. Most of the iron straps on the doors have been stolen, outdoor lanterns ripped off by copper thieves. Holes in the roof and tile damage may also have been inflicted by scavenging metal thieves.

The church is actually the first Dean and Bobby scouted of the dozens of abandoned ones in St Louis. It is the closest to their two-story abandoned home hide-a-way, but other than that, it is not an easy target. There are bums standing near all the entry ways, warming their hands at fire barrels, but keeping watch. He counts eight, figures there's probably as many inside. Dean suspects they are demons, can feel that like insects crawling on his nerves, putting him on high alert.

All Dean's reason for prayer, his hope, is inside this building, being held captive by Hell's angels, his brother and his partner. He's going in regardless of danger. But he's going to do it as safely as possible – and if he can convince the gruff old hunter beside him – he's going to do it without endangering anyone other than himself.

After the first reconnaissance mission, Dean has Bobby pull the truck over on the other side of the park down the street from the church. He goes through clothing in the bags in the back, choosing dark colors for hat, jacket, gloves. He rubs grease from the road on his face to darken it as well. He straps on the demon knife as well, puts a wire garrotte in his pocket, and straps a machete to his thigh. Beheading stops a demon as effectively as it stops a vampire.

"I'm going to crawl through the weeds here to take these four guys out, Bobby. I need you to circle near the back, on the other side of that brick path, so I have somewhere to send them if they're injured. Try driving by the front first, give them a distraction before you park it. Have first aid supplies ready. We'll fight our way out." Dean clasps Bobby in a hug, "Thanks for everything."

"Don't do anything stupid, Boy." Bobby says as he hugs him back. "I'll be there and you better get there. Just get 'em out." Bobby's eyes say the rest; they say Bobby loves him like a father and that he is proud of him, trusts him, believes in him, and all those other chick-flick things neither would stay still for to say out loud. Dean's eyes respond with the same types of unspoken messages. They clap each other's shoulder.

Dean drops to the ground and begins his long crawl through weeds and trash toward the front right side entrance to the old church. He needs to get as close as possible and take them down as silently as he can. Surprise is his ally, as is the dark, cloudy sky. He angles his way to get behind the demon nearest the side door, stands up swiftly right after the tall dark-haired meatsuit turns to walk toward the front again, and slides one hand over his mouth as the demon blade pierces his heart, lowers the body to the ground and drags it into the weeds. Waits.

The second guy looks toward where the first was, but his puzzlement doesn't stop him from being smart. He calls over a third man and they move toward Dean's hidden position. Dean lets them get in front of him, rises up with the knife to slice through the taller demon's throat, losing the knife as the body falls. He jumps back to avoid the third demon's knife, pulling the machete as the demon shouts for help.

This is why he hones the edges of his weapons, Dean thinks as he slices through the neck of the third demon, and recovers the demon knife. Three down, three coming at him, no idea where the other two are, and no idea if more will come pouring out of the building. Dean starts up the narrow steps leading to the door, falls back on the steps as one of the demons tackles him. He stabs almost blindly, but with the demon knife, four down.

Dean pulls himself upright, favoring his left side a little from the fall. He kicks the fifth in the head, sending him tackling back, but the sixth has a knife and slices across Dean's stomach, catching in the dark canvas jacket enough that Dean avoids incapacitating injury. As the two men square off, the other demon rises, shaking his head. The two stand at the bottom of the steps, both armed with knives, facing Dean. He holds the high ground and waits for them to make a move. They seem to be waiting for backup which is not coming.

"Dean Winchester. Hmm. You're too late." The demon dressed as a heavy black man says. "You should just run away and hide. Our lord, Lucifer, will be here soon. Your buddies caved and we have the secret for opening the cage. We have Lucifer's vessel. We've won…and you are nothing more than a pathetic insect."

Dean scoffs. "Hey, fugly, if I'm an insect, you should be doing a better job squashing me." He knows that's not his best repartee but, hey, he's just taking a breather to figure out his best method of attack. He takes a step towards them, a step closer to recovering the demon knife, machete held at an angle. Feints at them, moving them back another step.

"Take him alive," says the talkative one. "They want this vessel too." With those words, the two demons throw themselves at Dean, who just manages to grab the handle of the demon knife again, slicing the one, but not managing to duck as his knife sinks into Deans's shoulder. Dean drops the machete, his arm hanging loosely, blade stopping much of the blood loss. The other demon gets his hands around Dean's throat, choking him. Dean fights for air and consciousness as he gets his feet under the demon and flings him off onto the pavement. Where Bobby beheads him with the dropped machete.

"What are you doing here," Dean gasps out.

"Looks like I'm saving your ass." Bobby snorts. "Took out two. One smoked out, 'nother ran inside…"

"Bobby, you listen like a…"

Bobby cuts him off, "…a Winchester?"

It's Dean's turn to snort. He shakes his head and winces in pain as Bobby pulls the knife out of his shoulder and yanks down the jacket and shirt. He slaps an adhesive abdominal surgical pad over the bloody wound. "That'll hold it for now," he grumbles as Dean squirms away before Bobby notices the slice across his belly.

Dean rearms himself, demon knife in hand, machete back in its sheath on his leg, stretches to relieve some of the pain from bruising on his hip and knees. "Can you drag these bodies off?" Dean whispers. "Then get back to the getaway vehicle?" He asks pointedly. "We might need first aid."

"You're welcome," Bobby grumbles, starting to drag the bodies into the weeds surrounding the building. "This time – be more careful."

Dean opens the door and enters the church, ready for opposition that doesn't come.

There's bodies here, surrounded by burned marks, familiar as his brother's signature to Dean, who realizes his brother has been using the power they force into him to fight them. "Keep fighting, Sammy." Dean mutters as he follows close to the wall looking for any sign of where they are holding Sam or Cas. He hears his brother's shouts and finds himself in a reception area before several office doors. There's a pile of coats and weapons in the corner. Dean digs through them until he finds Cas's leather coat, takes the angel blade out of the sleeve and puts the demon knife in his pocket.

Dean goes over to the door he hears his brother behind, and he opens it cautiously. Directly in front of him, he steps over the drained bodies of three dead demons, a hunter's prowl, silent and stealthy as he's able: Dean's not an idiot, he knows when not to go all-guns blazing, and right now a straight fight will get him killed. He needs the surprise. Bent over Sam as he thrashes, a man pours blood into his brother's mouth from a silver chalice, one hand casually keeping his head tipped back, and restraints keeping him otherwise tied. As he sees blood course over Sam's chin while Sam desperately tries to fight it, Dean clenches his hand around Castiel's sword and surges forward, a two-fisted grip driving the blade to the hilt into the unprotected back of the angel tormenting his baby brother.

As the man before him arches involuntarily, letting the cup drop to the floor as he spins, Dean gets his first real look at the enemy. And for a terrified half a moment. . . it's _Cas. _Same jawline, same narrow build, and for just a moment as lips that were just slightly too thin drop in a defiant scream, the same vibrant blue eyes fix on Dean.

And then Grace shines behind his eyes, bursts from the wound, and the power buffets them all.

"No! No! I did not wait this long to fail now." Ba'el screams, and the power explodes from him violently, a wash of light that whites out the room as it flings Dean bodily, and with one arm braced across his eyes to preserve them, he can do little to slow his force before he hits the wall free-hand first, and his wrist snaps with an audible crack.

There's always a moment of panic that maybe he hadn't covered his eyes well enough, when these things happen, and he has to blink vision back into place slowly. It leaves Dean staring at the corpse laying only feet away, facing him, and no. . . no, silver hair, not dark, and smooth-shaved, not stubbled. Clerical collar and black suit. It wasn't Cas. Of course it wasn't Cas. Just another Novak lost to this stupid war.

"Dean, you okay?" stammers Sam as his brother continues to lie on the floor, straining against the restraints in an attempt to get a clear line of sight on his brother, a note of panic creeping into his tense voice. "Dean! You okay there, bro?"

A groan escapes Dean as he pulls himself up, carefully cradling his wrist against his stomach. "Saving your ass, baby brother," Dean rumbles, his voice thick with pain as he limps over to the chair and starts sawing left-handed at the ropes holding Sam. "Once I got in the church though looks like you did most of the work. We still gotta find Cas and get out of here."

Sam has one arm free and he takes the knife to cut the rest of the bindings loose, high-strung and wired as he had been in the walk between the Impala and Lucifer before. Watching his little brother cut himself loose, Dean allows himself to slump against the desk finally, blood-loss from the shoulder and stomach making him feel lethargic. He is holding his broken right wrist against his bloody abdomen, the left shoulder's bandage leaking blood from the aggravated stab wound, and breathing shallowly from broken ribs and deep bruising. Sam untangles himself, pulls his brother up, holding him with one arm around his waist until he can feel Dean get his feet under him.

"Come on big brother. We'll go rescue Cas, then we'll get out of here and get you some help."

He doesn't say anything about having to rescue the rescuer. Because that wasn't a new trick for any of them.

**. . .**

Once, an elaborate crucifix hung from the wall above him, and its imprint still remains on the wall in unpainted negative space, where redecoration of decades past had simply painted around it rather than move the cross. Its legacy remains in the broken plaster from taking it down with little care to the already abandoned church, and with deep holes within the walls surrounding it that seem to mockingly imitate the stigmata, at outstretched points.

Castiel stares at it blearily as the door into the sanctuary swings open beside him, onto the altar he has been constrained upon, in a chair that had once likely been intended for the priest after the homilies.

"Hello, Dean." He doesn't have to look away to know. Of course it's Dean. Of course it's Sam. Castiel had felt his brother die: who else could it be.

"Cas." Dean breathes out, but when Castiel finally lets his chin fall forward, tipping his head back drown from where he has been staring up at the empty space where faith once reigned, it's Sam, unstrapping his wrists, who he addresses next. As soon as a hand is free, he rests it on Sam's shoulder, drawing his friend's gaze up, and he looks past the drying blood painting his jaw and down his neck, and to the twitching, tense face before him, hazel eyes too wide.

"I'm sorry, Sam." He offers, knowing how hollow it is. Sam had fought—longer than he had—and it was just as futile. "We need to run. Now. She is there now. . ."

"How long?" Sam croaks in a voice that makes Cas wish he had water to offer, and he shrugs slightly, helping undo the leather strap on his other hand, leaving Sam to free his feet. "Soon. She will not have to work through trial and error as I did, and will face no resistance from the Cage itself."

He knows what Dean's silence means. He could hear in their shuffling footsteps that Dean was injured, but the silence. . .

Dean is staring at Ruben Rivera's cooling corpse when Castiel joins him, face carefully schooled into an emotionless mask when Dean raises his eyes to Cas's face again, a face covered in the drying telltale smear and spatter of a bloody nose, lined with the creases that betray a migraine headache, and even in the light of the one remaining construction lamp, he knows from a glance that Dean knows. Castiel murdered a_ human_.

They don't have time to discuss this: not yet.

"We need to run, Dean." Castiel repeats himself, gently taking Dean's arm over his shoulder as he pulls the bloodied angel blade from Dean's grip and into his own, turning it in his palm to settle it familiarly for battle, drawing Ruby's blade from Dean's pocket and placing it back in the elder Winchester's hand before cinching his arm around Dean's waist. "Sam, take point. There may still be demons outside. . ."

It feels callous, to use the blood pumping through Sam to his advantage, but the younger hunter doesn't seem to mind it: the demon blood makes him more eager, makes him more violent, a drug he should never have been made to struggle with again. And he is Lucifer's vessel: they will hesitate to attack, after the effort made to capture him.

They leave Rivera's corpse against the front doors, retracing Dean's steps through the church and retrieving their things, Sam's long legs taking him far in front of them, an imposing figure of roiling potential violence. Castiel guides Dean around the bodies at their feet.

Bobby curses sharply when he sees them, and the drive is tense silence: Sam jittery, tense, ashamed. Castiel, carefully patching up Dean's wounds in the back, silent under Dean's intense scrutiny, hyperaware of every indicator of pain. And as they reach the Impala, abandoned as it was where they had been taken, what they have all silently been waiting for occurs.

The beam of light in the distance is blinding, and the ringing, screaming sounds of his siblings staggers Castiel, sends him clutching the door of the car to keep himself upright, as heaven and hell both proclaim the news in mixed jubilation and terror.

Michael and Lucifer walk free.


	11. Epilogue

Epilogue

_You're living on the edge_

_Don't know left from right_

_They're breathing down your neck_

_You're running out of lives_

_And here comes, The razor's edge_

_Here comes, The razor's edge_

_The razor's edge!_

"The Razor's Edge" by AC/DC

Grief makes Dean's eyes seem even greener. Cas knows it is grief; he knows he put it there, but he doesn't want to talk about it right now.

Cas wants Dean to take the painkiller he is offering him, knowing it will make his lover tired and loopy; and maybe, just maybe, he would lie trusting in Cas's arms without judging, just a little while longer. Just long enough for Cas to think of some way to explain, to justify, killing Rivera. Tonight he failed at so many things, Cas thinks; he is the reason Michael and Lucifer are free, the reason Sam is now in mortal peril again, and he killed a man in cold blood. He silently begs Dean – with blue eyes swimming in sorrow – to take the drugs and give him respite from the need to rehash his transgressions.

Dean reaches out with his good hand, takes the pill and closes his fist around it, keeping eye contact with those pain-filled cerulean eyes. Eyes he could get lost in, that he wants to get lost in and shut out all the horror screaming in his head, but he knows he can't. "I'll take it in a little bit." Dean sits up straighter on the sleeping bag and squares his shoulders with a wince against the pain of a wounded shoulder and ribs that – fortunately – may only be cracked and not broken. His sliced abdomen needed only a few stitches, the rest shallow enough to heal under the antibiotic ointment and fresh gauze. He lets Cas help him pull a fresh t-shirt on, covering most of his injuries, everything except the wrist which he has in a brace Bobby found in the pickup.

"Hey, Sammy, can you stop pacing a minute and come join us?" Dean has been watching his brother bounce off walls since they got back to the hideaway. Sam is dealing with an overload of demon blood, practically crackling with the energy and power of it coursing through his system. At the same time, Sam is wringing his hands with worry. He kicked this addiction once and is worried that being force-fed the blood will make him crave it all over again.

With all the sigils in place corrected and approved by Castiel's critical eye, and the car and truck hidden in the overgrown yards of neighboring houses, Dean figures they are as safe as they can be with two pissed off archangels and the forces of heaven and hell looking for them – not to mention the police. He's tired and afraid to sleep, knowing that they are not safe in their own dreams. He knows how tired he is and imagines the others feel the same. Tiredness built of defeat, not just expended energy or the late hour. And he's tired of being afraid, of needing to be, of having life dump on him and his family again.

Bobby has been sitting at the camp table using Dean's laptop to watch for signs of what they all know is coming now, to try and get a handle on how things are going to hit.

Sam sits in the other camp chair, but his legs are bouncing and he is holding on to the seat like he's fighting gravity to stay sitting. He has washed up since they escaped, and his eyes are no longer demon black. Sam is far from okay, though, his worst nightmare has been freed from the cage. As he watches his brother struggle to stand, Sam shoots out of the chair to help him, then walks his brother to the chair opposite Bobby's and resumes his pacing.

Snorting, Dean decides to let it go. Let go of his twinge of anger at needing to be helped like an old man or an invalid, let go of the fear that has gripped him deep inside, let go of his anger at himself for not figuring out that something was wrong the minute Amelia showed up, even though she shouldn't have known where they were.

"Stop blaming yourself, Dean." Sam cuts into Dean's thoughts like he can actually see what's going on in his brother's head. "We were all there. We all overlooked the same things. This…" he says gesturing to mean the entire situation they found themselves in, "…this isn't your fault. I'm not even sure we could have stopped it any more. It just all seems to want to turn out this way." Sam sighs deeply, like he can expel the thought along with the words.

Bobby snorts. "Wastin' yer breath, Sam. Yer brother's gonna blame himself. Like he's the only one here who's a hunter. And, yeah, like he carries the weight for everything that goes wrong." Bobby shifts to face Dean. "It's not your fault."

"Yeah, well…" Dean trails off. He appreciates what they're saying, but they can't tell him on one hand that he's their leader and then on the other that the mistakes are not his fault. His one good hand reaches up to scratch at his head. "Whatever," he ends that train of thought. "We still need to hear what happened to each one of us since we got separated. Then we need to figure out where we go from here."

**. . .**

"oh, _Hell_ no."

Of all of the disagreements to arise in the hour, this one seems to be the tipping point. With Castiel sitting in Sam's abandoned camp chair, nearly bent double to rest his elbows on his knees, hands hanging loose, he didn't seem to be on the defensive. Nevertheless, Dean looms over him, and his voice has risen once again. They skirted issues, as Dean steered them towards trying to pin down the next move. . . and now they were derailing completely because of one quiet interjection. "Absolutely frikkin' not, Cas, do you hear me?"

"Yes, Dean. I 'hear you.'" Castiel's voice is low, weary, but the gaze he turns up to Dean shows no hint of relenting. "You're yelling at me. It would be difficult _not_ to hear you. Regardless, this is something I _have_ to do. And something I am _going_ to do."

"What, just going to ignore me some more, then? This is bullshit, Cas! You all need me, 'I'm the glue,'" Dean says mockingly. "I 'should lead this,' but you won't frikkin' listen to me or let me _help_. A frikkin' figurehead." Dean is practically shouting, and he's trying to gesture with his hands emphatically which Sam thinks is pretty pathetic considering he has a broken wrist on one arm and was stabbed in the opposite shoulder. Sam is still trying to follow the rant, still flying high on demon blood, thinking maybe he should lock Dean somewhere safe, wrap him in cotton batting, so he doesn't get hurt anymore. It seems like Dean is always getting hurt, or dead, or threatening to let Michael possess him …

"Dean, I need to see Amelia again. There are things that should be explained, and things. . ."

Of course, it wasn't like Cas's idea was all that great either.

"She _sold us out_!" Ducking his head down, Dean parses it down into the phrases he _knows_ from experience will get through to Castiel. "She sold _me_ out, Cas, tried to hand me over to the cops, and to the demons."

Jaw bunching, Castiel raises his head and meets Dean's eyes unflinchingly this time, and Dean tries not to let it bother him that Castiel can stay stubborn despite the fact that that would have been enough to trigger every one of Cas's instincts towards Dean if it were anyone but the wife of the body he'd inherited.

"I don't believe she knew about the demon involvement. That does not excuse it. . ." Cas interjects, before Dean can explode at him again, already grimacing in preparation for another burst of ear-splitting noise. ". . . But I still need to speak to her."

"No, you _don't!"_

Cas's chin juts out, blue eyes slitted and fixed on Dean. "I am not planning to allow you, Dean Winchester, to dictate to me; we are lovers, I am not now, nor have I ever been, your 'pet.' I am not a baby and you are not my keeper, nor my protector. I owe this to Jimmy. And I owe it to Claire."

"Jimmy is _dead_, Cas!"

"I _know_ that, Dean! I _felt _him die!" Castiel doesn't consciously remember rising to his feet, but he registers that he's put himself on eye-level with Dean, hands bunched into fists at his side, voice raised to match Dean's, and he forces himself to breathe out slowly as soon as he registers his anger, turning his head away as Dean blinks at his outburst. His eyes fix on Sam, leaned against the wall, watching them blatantly.

In the ensuing silence, Dean follows Cas's line of sight and frowns at his brother, sniping. "What, you wanna make some popcorn? Stand there and watch the show?"

"We _got_ any popcorn?" Sam retorts quickly, and Dean scowls at him and then at Bobby, when the elder hunter snorts.

"Shut up, Sam." Dean grits out through his teeth and takes hold of his angel's sleeve, tugging it to get Cas to follow him outside the room into the hallway—even in the middle of an argument, Cas offers no resistance. It's dark here, lit only slightly by the room behind them, and not actually private, but if Dean keeps his voice down he can speak to Cas alone. He angles them both away from Sam's prying eyes and lowers his voice, trying for reasonable again.

"Cas, I don't want you to go see her. She turned us over to the police. She lured us apart and got you snatched. This idea sucks." Dean lets his worry fill his eyes, practically pleads with him. "I'm in no shape to mount another rescue mission. Man, please."

In the darkened hall, Castiel presses his fingertips against his eyelids and tries to will away his headache, to silence the ringing in his head, as he weighs his words, standing stiff and awkward before Dean. After a moment, Dean's braced hand comes to rest on his shoulder, and Cas sighs quietly, letting himself be comforted by the touch enough to speak. "He loved her, Dean. I know that makes you feel nervous and guilty, because it makes _me _guilty. But _I _do not love her. I took her husband from her, and cost her her daughter. Whatever she became from that, I had a hand in. I do not intend a long conversation, but I do need to speak to her . . . I cannot leave things where they were. Can you just trust me? Trust _us_, long enough to accept that my need to speak to her is not . . ." Dropping his hand from his eyes, Cas gestures, trying to find words. Eventually, he gives up, opening his eyes again and trying to convey half-formed thoughts with them. "I can stay in sight, we can all go together as we leave, but I need to try to make her understand."

Dean breaks their stare first, shaking his head slightly and turning away, and he offers the compromise with an air of finality. "Burner phone, once we're already out of here. I'm not setting us up for an ambush. You can talk to her, but you make it quick and we ditch the phone before they get a trace on it again. Deal?"

"Do I have a choice but to agree, Dean?" Cas's gait is stiff as he steps around Dean once more into the room where the rest of their family waits. This time, Bobby looks up, and shoots a measuring look at the two of them, before hauling himself to his feet and pointing at his abandoned chair for Dean.

"Alright. We done with that little episode now? 'Cause you two are just gonna keep at it like this until you deal with what's actually going on and we don't have time to play Jerry Springer 'bout the ex-wife and the boyfriend in the middle of the Apocalypse." Castiel shuffles slightly on his feet, and Bobby points at the other chair commandingly until Cas lowers himself into it, watching Bobby warily. He doesn't want to have this conversation.

Which is exactly why Bobby thinks they need to.

"Feathers here killed Rivera." Both Dean and Castiel flinch, and Sam shifts in his place, folding his arms and watching the situation, reacting to the suddenly ratcheting tension. "Which is something that's crossed the minds of all four of us more'n once in the past half a year, fair to say? Dean, if it'd been a fair fight in San Antonio and you'd walked away from it and he hadn't, not a one of us woulda lost sleep over it. But he got the drop on you, and all three of us had to watch what went down."

It was the first time Bobby had admitted to seeing the video, and Dean looks so damned young for a split second, the wounded kid who'd silently stared at him while he had coaxed him into talking again, learning how to fix cars with his daddy in the salvage yard. Then the mask is back up, hard and unyielding, as if he had anything to prove to the people in the room with him, as if they'd think worse of him for getting the snot knocked out of him when he should have been in the hospital long before the first punch was thrown. "Hell, in Utah if it hadn't been for the Mormon brothers talking reason he'd have been a smear of blood in a diner and it woulda pissed you off then too. "

"You wouldn't have actually killed him, Bobby." Dean's voice holds absolute conviction, and damn it but Bobby wished that he deserved that trust in him. "Not coldly. In a fight, or self defense, yeah, but. . ."

"I'm with Cas on this one, Dean." Bobby tips his head towards the fallen angel, and Cas shoots him a quick look of mingled surprise and gratitude. "Yeah, I know, I'm the one that told you they wouldn't have done it." Bobby tells the fallen angel. "And they wouldn't have. They didn't. These boys are as good of hunters as they come, but we don't go hunting _people_. But I ain't exactly shedding tears that he's gone. Man was working with demons, and whether he knew it was Apocalypse stuff or just thought he could get the drop on you by playing along with Meg, doesn't exactly matter. He put himself there, and he's gone now." Bobby stops talking directly to Cas and addresses the boys too. "We got enough on our plates right now without playing the blame game."

"He's right." Sam's immediate agreement startles Dean, and he swings his gaze to his brother, eyebrows climbing his forehead. "Yeah, I know what you're going to say, Dean. I'm not supposed to want to kill people. I don't know what I'd have done if it'd been me. We should save people, and I don't like it when we have to kill something rational and mostly human, even . . . but I dunno, Dean. I wasn't exactly checking the pulse on all of those demons I dropped, either. I don't know if their hosts lived or died, and even if they pulled through _me. . ._ they're all dead now, with Michael and Lucifer rising there. This isn't exactly our finest hour, Dean. I think part of it is. . ." Raking his hand through his hair, Sam shoots a look at his brother that's apologetic even before he opens his mouth. "I think you don't like that it was for you, Dean."

"It wasn't _for_ me! Even if Rivera had frikkin' _killed_ me I wouldn't have wanted that." Dean objects, loud and angry. He feels as if they are talking about Cas serving up Rivera's body like some sort of gift he should be thankful for.

Cas is shaking his head already, palming his jaw and speaking over Dean to Sam. ". . .No. I knew Dean would not want it. As Bobby said, when I first wanted to kill Rivera. . . you are _heroes_. It is not what you would have wanted. I'm an angel." Castiel grimaces. ". . ._Was_ an angel. Whatever I am now, I am still not a hero. Dean is right to be wary. I could have stopped. I sought vengeance despite the harm I caused myself doing it."

"Sounds familiar." Bobby interjects in an undertone, and Dean glares at him, until Cas catches his eye, turning in his chair and raising his chin, shoulders squared.

"Rivera never raised a hand against me, and had no role in what happened in that room that I can determine. His part in this entire situation was that he was a convenient, easily manipulated pawn for Meg that could get her closer to us because of his obsession ever since . . ." And again, Castiel can replay the memory perfectly. He clenches his fists, as if he could crush Rivera's windpipe again, words cutting short as his teeth snap together. He forces himself to focus, only speaking again when his words can maintain the even, level tone. "I killed Ruben Rivera for what he did to you. Regardless of your wishes on the matter. I have felt remorse for a great many things since I became capable of the emotion. While I regret the _how_ I did it, I am not sorry that he is dead or that I killed him. He _deserved_ to die. It was justice."

And now Dean's entire family is all there, putting him into that corner, watching him squirm. Pushing himself to his feet, Dean stalks over to the cooler, pulling his pill from his pocket and tossing it into his mouth, and he can almost _feel_ Cas's sudden sharp interest in the narcotic. He hadn't even thought about it, when Cas gave him the drugs, or what it'd take for him to do it. For a moment the pill sits bitter on his tongue before he decides on the water bottle over the beer bottle after all, washing it down and with it some of his choicer responses. "Look, I get it. Rivera was a miserable son of a bitch, and the world's better off without him. Trust me, I _get it_. I lived it, alright? What I don't need, though, is to have to worry about whether or not every time someone kicks my ass their name's getting added to some sort of frikkin' hit list. We gotta draw a line somewhere."

"I crossed a line." Dean can't decide if Castiel is asking a question or agreeing with him. Turning, he looks at the fallen angel to find Cas staring back at him. "I share a different morality. The same morality that allowed Gabriel to believe that his tricks on those he considered arrogant was justice. That permitted Balthazar to accept what that child did with the Staff of Moses. Or that convinced Anna that killing your parents to end the Apocalypse was right. Dean's primary concern is that I am willing to do things he would consider immoral in order to save him, or avenge him." Tearing his gaze away from Dean, Castiel meets Sam's eyes, his head canting to the side in the old, familiar angle. "I think that you can attest to that fact, Sam." Castiel has no line he will leave uncrossed, when he's convinced himself it is right, when he feels it will keep Dean safe. Short of Dean, Sam is his closest friend. . . and he broke his wall without hesitation, to sideline Dean.

Sam looks away first. Cas ducks his head, and sighs. "Are we going to be able to move past this, Dean?"

"You gonna stop trying to go Darth Vader every chance you get?" Dean fires back, and raises an eyebrow after a moment, walking back to Cas's chair and looking down at the top of his head questioningly. He'd caught that quick flash of expression, before Cas ducked his head and drew his shoulders in, and it wasn't contrition. ". . . What the hell did you just find funny there, Cas?"

Licking his lips, Cas looks up at Dean without rising from his chair, and shrugs sheepishly. ". . . I made that reference. It was wildly inappropriate, but seemed. . . right. At the time." Dean's watching him as if he's not quite sure whether to be proud, or to smack Cas upside the head, so Castiel shrugs (an acquired gesture). "I empathized with him when we watched the movie. I thought it was the point, to associate yourself with the characters."

"You 'empathized' with the _villain_, Cas?" Dean's decided on exasperation, and indignation on his behalf, but Sam's latching onto the tangent. "Did you do that for all of us? Who'd you decide I was?"

"You're Luke." Cas says, frowning at the younger Winchester. He thought that would be obvious.

"It's the hair. And the puppy-dog look." Dean snipes, and the tension in the room dissipates as he lets himself sit down, carefully lowering his injured body back onto his sleeping bag.

"That makes you Leah." Sam shoots back, triumphant, but Cas is already shaking his head. "No. Dean possesses the vehicle and a sense of humor frequently lacked by the other characters."

Dean punches the air in triumph (then winces and presses his braced hand to his ribs) and comes to the conclusion before Cas can give it. "I'm frikkin' Han Solo, baby. I'm gonna disagree with the Luke thing, then. That totally makes you Chewie, Sammy."

Nobody contests that Bobby is Obi-Wan Kenobi (though Bobby huffs at it, turning back to his computer), and the argument continues until Dean tugs Castiel's hand, pulling him down from his camp chair and onto the sleeping bag next to him, the drugs making him tired and loopy, making it harder to fight sleep. Pointing his injured hand at Sam, he looks at him pleadingly, as if suddenly remembering that the demon blood is still pumping through his brother, and what happened the last time that was the case. "Be here when I wake up, okay?"

"I'm not going anywhere, Dean." Sam promises earnestly, and Bobby pointedly takes another pull from his spiked coffee. He was pulling the first guard duty shift, watching the amped up youngest Winchester and making sure nothing crept up on them while they slept.

Dean may or may not call Castiel "princess" as he nods off. The angel decides not to argue that matter, for now, as he gently pulls Dean into an embrace and coaxes him to rest his head on Cas's shoulder.

"Sleep, Dean." The Apocalypse would still be there, tomorrow.


End file.
